The Skill Composition of Migration and the Generosity of the Welfare State

Alon Cohen, Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka

No 14738, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Skilled migrants typically contribute to the welfare state more than they draw in benefits from it. The opposite holds for unskilled migrants. This suggests that a host country is likely to boost (respectively, curtail) its welfare system when absorbing high-skill (respectively, low-skill) migration. In this paper we first examine this hypothesis in a politico-economic setup. We then confront the prediction of the theory with evidence. In doing so, we reckon with an endogeneity problem that arise because the skill composition of migration is itself affected by the generosity of the welfare state.

JEL-codes: F22 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
Note: IFM ITI PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14738.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Skill Composition of Migration and the Generosity of the Welfare State (2009)
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:nbr:nberwo:14738

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14738

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().