With a little help from abroad: the effect of low-skilled immigration on the female labor supply

Guglielmo Barone () and Sauro Mocetti

No 766, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: In this paper we examine whether and how the inflow of female immigrants who �specialize� in household production affects the labor supply of Italian women. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the family reunification motive and the network effects - i.e. the tendency of newly arriving female immigrants to settle in places where males of the same country already live - as an instrument for the geographical distribution of female foreign workers. We find that the higher the number of immigrants who provide household services the more time native Italian women spend at work (intensive margin) without affecting their labor force participation (extensive margin). The impact is concentrated on the highly skilled women whose time has a higher opportunity cost. These results also hold after a battery of robustness checks. Some further evidence confirms that the impact passes through the substitution in household work rather than complementarities in the production sector. Finally, we show that immigration arises as a substitute to publicly provided welfare services, although this raises concerns about the fairness and the sustainability of this private and informal welfare model.

Keywords: immigration; female labor supply; household production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Journal Article: With a little help from abroad: The effect of low-skilled immigration on the female labour supply (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_766_10

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