Hypothesis on Immigration and Welfare

29 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2007

See all articles by Pilar Garcia-Gomez

Pilar Garcia-Gomez

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) - Erasmus School of Economics (ESE)

Guillem Lopez Casasnovas

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences

Date Written: September 2003

Abstract

The number of hypothesis trying to explain which are the reasons behind the decision to migrate to work into a developed country are diverse and at the same time, difficult to test due to the multiplicity of factors which affect it. This papers attempts to move forward trying to disentangle which are the socio-economic factors that explain the differences in the figures of immigrants in the OECD countries. We show empirical evidence about the determinants of the migratory flows to 17 OECD countries from 65 countries in the 1980-2000 period. Our results reveal the importance to differentiate the inflows composition by at least income in the origin countries. Thus, regarding inflows from non-high-income countries, the results suggest that there is a pull effect from monetary and not real income, and then, the welfare magnets hypothesis should be rejected. This group reacts more to the migratory policy than the inflows coming from high-income countries, although those policies designed to slow down the inflows have not been able, in the aggregate, to reduce them.

Keywords: International migrations, migratory policy

JEL Classification: F22, O15, J1

Suggested Citation

Garcia Gomez, Pilar and Lopez Casasnovas, Guillem, Hypothesis on Immigration and Welfare (September 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1001650 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1001650

Pilar Garcia Gomez

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) - Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) ( email )

P.O. Box 1738
3000 DR Rotterdam, NL 3062 PA
Netherlands

Guillem Lopez Casasnovas (Contact Author)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences ( email )

Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
Barcelona, 08005
Spain

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