Labor Market and Immigration Behavior of Middle-Aged and Elderly Mexicans

Emma Aguila and Julie Zissimopoulos

No WR-726, Working Papers from RAND Corporation

Abstract: This study analyzed the retirement behavior of Mexicans with migration spells to the United States that returned to Mexico and non-migrants. The analysis is based on rich panel data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS). Approximately 9 percent of MHAS respondents age 50 and older reported having lived or worked in the United States. These return migrants were more likely to be working at older ages than non-migrants. Consistent with much of the prior research on retirement in the United States and other developed countries, Mexican non-migrants and return migrants were responsive to institutional incentives. Both groups were more likely to retire if they had publicly provided health insurance and pensions. In addition, receipt of U.S. Social Security benefits increased retirement rates among return migrants. Return migrants were more likely to report being in poor health and this also increased the likelihood of retiring. The 2004 draft of an Agreement on Social Security would coordinate benefits across United States and Mexico boundaries to protect the benefits of persons who have worked in foreign countries. The agreement would likely increase the number of authorized and unauthorized Mexican workers and family member eligible for Social Security benefits. The responsiveness of current, older Mexican return migrants to pension benefits, suggests that an agreement would affect the retirement behavior of Mexican migrants.

JEL-codes: J14 J21 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR726.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Working Paper: Labor Market and Immigration Behavior of Middle-Aged and Elderly Mexicans (2008)
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:ran:wpaper:wr-726

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from RAND Corporation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benson Wong ().