Improved legal status as the major source of earnings premiums associated with intermarriage: evidence from the 1986 IRCA amnesty

Miao Chi ()
Additional contact information
Miao Chi: Drew University

Review of Economics of the Household, 2017, vol. 15, issue 2, No 15, 706 pages

Abstract: Abstract Exploiting a natural experiment, this paper uses the 1990 US Census data and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act amnesty to investigate the major mechanism through which intermarriage influences immigrant earnings. My strategy involves comparing international marriage premiums received by two groups of Mexican immigrants who arrived before and after the cutoff date of eligibility. Both groups face similar language and culture related obstacles and have to adapt themselves to the new environment, except that unauthorized Mexican workers who arrived before 1982 could obtain legal status through the amnesty while those who arrived after the cutoff date obtained legal status through marriage to a US citizen. Instrumental variables estimates show a significantly larger intermarriage premium for Mexican immigrants who migrated after the cutoff date and no statistically significant intermarriage premium is found in the pre-1982 group. The 35 % premium gap indicates a large effect of intermarriage on immigrant labor market outcomes, operating primarily through an improvement of legal status.

Keywords: Immigration; Legal status; Economic assimilation; International intermarriage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-015-9305-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:kap:reveho:v:15:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11150-015-9305-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-015-9305-x

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().