The Immigrant Next Door: Exposure, Prejudice, and Altruism

Leonardo Bursztyn (), Thomas Chaney, Tarek Hassan and Aakash Rao
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Leonardo Bursztyn: University of Chicago - Department of Economics
Aakash Rao: Harvard University

No 2021-16, Working Papers from Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics

Abstract: We study how decades-long exposure to individuals of a given foreign descent shapes natives’ attitudes and behavior toward that group, exploiting plausibly exogenous shocks to the ancestral composition of US counties. We combine several existing large-scale surveys, cross-county data on implicit prejudice, a newly-collected national survey, and individualized donations data from large charitable organizations. We first show that greater long-term exposure to Arab-Muslims: i) decreases both explicit and implicit prejudice against Arab-Muslims, ii) reduces support for policies and political candidates hostile toward Arab-Muslims, iii) increases charitable donations to Arab countries, iv) leads to more personal contact with Arab-Muslim individuals, and v) increases knowledge of Arab-Muslims and Islam in general. We then generalize our analysis, showing that exposure to any given foreign ancestry leads to more altruistic behavior toward that group.

Keywords: contact; attitudes; immigration; prejudice; altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D91 J15 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 95 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2021-16

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