The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal
George Borjas
Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Abstract:
This paper brings a new perspective to the analysis of the Mariel supply shock, revisiting the question and the data armed with the accumulated insights from the vast literature on the economic impact of immigration. A crucial lesson from this literature is that any credible attempt to measure the wage impact of immigration must carefully match the skills of the immigrants with those of the pre-existing workforce. The Marielitos were disproportionately low-skill; at least 60 percent were high school dropouts. A reappraisal of the Mariel evidence, specifically examining the evolution of wages in the low-skill group most likely to be affected, quickly overturns the finding that Mariel did not affect Miami's wage structure. The absolute wage of high school dropouts in Miami dropped dramatically, as did the wage of high school dropouts relative to that of either high school graduates or college graduates. The drop in the relative wage of the least educated Miamians was substantial (10 to 30 percent), implying an elasticity of wages with respect to the number of workers between -0.5 and -1.5. In fact, comparing the magnitude of the steep post-Mariel drop in the low-skill wage in Miami with that observed in all other metropolitan areas over an equivalent time span between 1977 and 2001 reveals that the change in the Miami wage structure was a very unusual event. The analysis also documents the sensitivity of the estimated wage impact to the choice of a placebo. The measured impact is much smaller when the placebo consists of cities where pre- Mariel employment growth was weak relative to Miami.
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)
Downloads: (external link)
https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1262
Related works:
Chapter: THE WAGE IMPACT OF THE MARIELITOS: A REAPPRAISAL (2021)
Journal Article: The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal (2017)
Working Paper: The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal (2015)
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:ecl:harjfk:15-057
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (workingpapers@econlit.org).