Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities

David Card, Christian Dustmann and Ian Preston

No 2012013, Norface Discussion Paper Series from Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London

Abstract: There is strong public opposition to increased immigration throughout Europe. Given the modest economic impacts of immigration estimated in most studies, the depth of antiimmigrant sentiment is puzzling. Immigration, however, does not just affect wages and taxes. It also changes the composition of the local population, threatening the "compositional amenities" that natives derive from their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. In this paper we use a simple latent factor model, combined with data for 21 countries from the 2002 European Social Survey (ESS), to measure the relative importance of economic and compositional concerns in driving opinions about immigration policy. The ESS included a unique battery of questions on the labor market and social impacts of immigration, as well as on the desirability of increasing or reducing immigrant inflows. We find that compositional concerns are 2-5 times more important in explaining variation in individual attitudes toward immigration policy than concerns over wages and taxes. Likewise, most of the difference in opinion between more- and lesseducated respondents is attributable to heightened compositional concerns among people with lower education.

Keywords: Immigration; Economic Effects; Attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I31 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (234)

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Related works:
Journal Article: IMMIGRATION, WAGES, AND COMPOSITIONAL AMENITIES (2012)
Working Paper: Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities (2009)
Working Paper: Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nor:wpaper:2012013

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