Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives' Marriage, and Fertility

Michela Carlana and Marco Tabellini ()
Additional contact information
Marco Tabellini: Harvard Business School

No 11467, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we study the effects of immigration on natives' marriage, fertility, and family formation across US cities between 1910 and 1930. Instrumenting immigrants' location decision by interacting pre-existing ethnic settlements with aggregate migration flows, we find that immigration raised marriage rates, the probability of having children, and the propensity to leave the parental house for young native men and women. We show that these effects were driven by the large and positive impact of immigration on native men's employment and occupational standing, which increased the supply of "marriageable men". We also explore alternative mechanisms − changes in sex ratios, natives' cultural responses, and displacement effects of immigrants on female employment − and provide evidence that none of them can account for a quantitatively relevant fraction of our results.

Keywords: immigration; marriage; fertility; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 J61 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-his, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives' Marriage and Fertility (2020)
Working Paper: Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives’ Marriage, and Fertility (2019)
Working Paper: Happily Ever After: Immigration, Natives' Marriage, and Fertility (2018)
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