Who Immigrates? Theory and Evidence

Örn B. Bodvarsson () and Hendrik Berg ()
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Örn B. Bodvarsson: St. Cloud State University
Hendrik Berg: University of Nebraska

Chapter Chapter 4 in The Economics of Immigration, 2009, pp 79-106 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Do immigrants differ from their source country and destination country native-born peers with respect to their personal characteristics and labor market performance? This chapter surveys recent theoretical work and empirical evidence since the late 1970s that examines how immigrants self select with respect to partially-unobservable characteristics such as innate ability or fully observable characteristics such as years of schooling. Specifically, this chapter examines how immigrants self-select in response to international differences in returns to skill and education, migrants’ cost constraints, and immigration policy, among other factors. This chapter also examines the literature on how immigrants assimilate in their destination societies, which indirectly has influenced discussions about the characteristics of those who immigrate. Unlike the last two chapters, which discussed the theoretical and empirical models separately, this chapter covers both the theoretical and empirical literatures.

Keywords: Income Inequality; Destination Country; Source Country; Reservation Wage; Migration Cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-77796-0_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77796-0_4

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