The Impact of Family Size and Sibling Structure on the Great Mexico-U.S. Migration

Massimiliano Bratti, Simona Fiore and Mariapia Mendola

No 392, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: We investigate how fertility and demographic factors affect migration at the household level by assessing the causal effects of sibship size and structure on offspring's international migration. We use a rich demographic survey on the population of Mexico and exploit presumably exogenous variation in family size induced by biological fertility and infertility shocks. We further exploit cross-sibling differences to identify birth order, sibling-sex, and sibling-age composition effects on migration. We find that large families per se do not boost offspring out-migration. Yet, the likelihood of migrating is not equally distributed within a household, but is higher for sons and decreases sharply with birth order. The female migration disadvantage also varies with sibling composition by age and gender.

Keywords: International Migration; Mexico; Family Size; Sibling Structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J13 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dev and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/202640/1/GLO-DP-0392.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of family size and sibling structure on the great Mexico–USA migration (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:392

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