Emigration and the Age Profile of Retirement among Immigrants

Deborah Cobb-Clark and Steven Stillman ()
Additional contact information
Steven Stillman: Free University of Bozen/Bolzano

No 3874, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between immigrants' retirement status and the prevalence of return migration from the host country to their country of origin. We develop a simple theoretical model to illustrate that under reasonable conditions the probability of return migration is maximized at retirement. Reduced-form models of retirement status which control for the rate of return migration are then estimated using unique data on emigration rates matched to individual-level data for Australia. We find that immigrants, particularly immigrant women, are more likely to be retired than are native-born men and women with the same demographic, human capital, and family characteristics. Moreover, within the immigrant population, there is a negative relationship between the propensity to be retired and the return migration rate of one's fellow countrymen, particularly amongst men. This link is strongest for those individuals who are at (or near) retirement age and among those with the highest cost of return migration. These results suggest that the fiscal pressures associated with aging immigrant populations vary substantially across origin countries.

Keywords: Australia; emigration; return migration; immigrants; retirement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J08 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published as "Return migration and the age profile of retirement among immigrants" in: IZA Journal of Migration 2013, 2:20

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3874.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Emigration and the Age Profile of Retirement Among Immigrants (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3874

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().