Age at Migration and Social Integration

Olof Åslund, Anders Böhlmark and Oskar Skans

No 4263, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The paper studies childhood migrants and examines how age at migration affects their ensuing integration at the residential market, the labor market, and the marriage market. We use population-wide Swedish data and compare outcomes as adults among siblings arriving at different ages in order to ensure that the results can be given a causal interpretation. The results show that the children who arrived at a higher age had substantially lower shares of natives among their neighbors, coworkers and spouses as adults. The effects are mostly driven by higher exposure to immigrants of similar ethnic origin, in particular at the marriage market. We also find some effects on educational attainment, employment rates and wages, although these effects are much more limited in magnitude. We also analyze children of migrants and show that parents' time in the host country before child birth matters, which implies that the outcomes of the social integration process are inherited. Inherited integration has a particularly strong impact on the marriage patterns of females.

Keywords: age at migration; segregation; integration; immigration; siblings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J12 J13 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2015, 35, 135–144

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Related works:
Working Paper: Age at migration and social integration (2009)
Working Paper: Age at migration and social integration (2009)
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