IMMIGRATION AND DEMOGRAPHICS: CAN HIGH IMMIGRANT FERTILITY EXPLAIN VOTER SUPPORT FOR IMMIGRATION?

Henning Bohn and Armando R Lopez-Velasco

University of California at Santa Barbara, Recent Works in Economics from Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara

Abstract: First generation immigrants to the United States have higher fertility rates than natives. This paper analyzes to what extent this factor provides political support for immigration, using an overlapping generation model with production and capital accumulation. In this setting, immigration represents a dynamic trade-off for native workers as more immigrants decrease current wages but increase the future return on their savings. We find that immigrant fertility has surprisingly strong effects on voter incentives, especially when there is persistence in the political process. If fertility rates are sufficiently high, native workers support immigration. Persistence, either due to inertia induced by frictions in the legal system or through expectational linkages, significantly magnifies the effects. Entry of immigrants with high fertility has redistributive impacts across generations similar to pay-as-you-go social security: initial generations are net winners, whereas later generations are net losers.

Keywords: Behavioral and Social Science; Basic Behavioral and Social Science; Immigration; Political Economy Model; Overlapping Generations; Immigrant Fertility Rates; Intergenerational Redistribution; Economic Theory; Applied Economics; Econometrics; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9dk2h7cv.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: IMMIGRATION AND DEMOGRAPHICS: CAN HIGH IMMIGRANT FERTILITY EXPLAIN VOTER SUPPORT FOR IMMIGRATION? (2019)
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:cdl:ucsbrw:qt9dk2h7cv

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of California at Santa Barbara, Recent Works in Economics from Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().