International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills

Miguel Flores, Alexander Patt, Jens Ruhose and Simon Wiederhold ()

No 100, Growth Lab Working Papers from Harvard's Growth Lab

Abstract: We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than non-migrants. Conditional on occupational skills, education and earnings no longer predict migration decisions. Differential labor-market returns to occupational skills explain the observed selection pattern and significantly outperform previously used returns-to-skills measures in predicting migration. Results are persistent over time and hold within narrowly defined regional, sectoral, and occupational labor markets.

Keywords: occupational skills; emigrant selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J24 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
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Related works:
Journal Article: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2021)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:glh:wpfacu:100

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