IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v50y2018i4p426-440.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investment and interruption: effects of the US experience on the earnings of return migrants in Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Shan Li

Abstract

Migration is widely viewed as an investment in human capital. However, due to the imperfect transferability of skills and knowledge across countries, migration trips are also career interruptions, especially for return migrants who may meanwhile experience depreciation of home country-specific skills. This article demonstrates that migration experience increases return migrants’ earnings in the home country on the condition that the migration stay is sufficiently long and mostly uninterrupted. Employing the revised human capital earnings function, the empirical study shows that only a barely interrupted US experience longer than five years, regardless of the legal status of the migration trips, predicts higher earnings of male return migrants in Mexico than comparable non-migrants. Robust findings emerge controlling for unobserved individual \]acteristics or using instrumental variables to deal with the self-selection and endogeneity. Short migration stays in the US and frequent traveling provide return migrants no wage premium in Mexico.

Suggested Citation

  • Shan Li, 2018. "Investment and interruption: effects of the US experience on the earnings of return migrants in Mexico," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(4), pages 426-440, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:426-440
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2017.1324616
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2017.1324616
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2017.1324616?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mincer, Jacob & Polachek, Solomon, 1974. "Family Investment in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 76-108, Part II, .
    2. George J. Borjas & Bernt Bratsberg, 2021. "Who Leaves? The Outmigration Of The Foreign-Born," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 5, pages 93-104, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria Caridad Araujo & Karen Macours, 2021. "Education, Income and Mobility: Experimental Impacts of Childhood Exposure to Progresa after 20 Years," Working Papers halshs-03364972, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernt Bratsberg & James F. Ragan & Zafar M. Nasir, 2002. "The Effect of Naturalization on Wage Growth: A Panel Study of Young Male Immigrants," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(3), pages 568-597, July.
    2. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence Kahn, 1995. "The Gender Earnings Gap: Some International Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: Differences and Changes in Wage Structures, pages 105-144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kadreva, Olga, 2016. "The influence of quantity and age of children on working women’ salaries," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 41, pages 62-77.
    4. Lawson, Cornelia & Geuna, Aldo & Ana Fernández-Zubieta & Toselli, Manuel & Kataishi, Rodrigo, 2015. "International Careers of Researchers in Biomedical Sciences: A Comparison of the US and the UK," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201514, University of Turin.
    5. Maria Kravtsova & Aleksey Oshchepkov, 2019. "Market And Network Corruption," HSE Working papers WP BRP 209/EC/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    6. Susan Averett & Sanders Korenman, 1996. "The Economic Reality of the Beauty Myth," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(2), pages 304-330.
    7. Jackline Wahba, 2021. "Who benefits from return migration to developing countries?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 123-123, December.
    8. Rashid, Saman, 2004. "Immigrant Earnings, Assimilation and Heterogeneity," Umeå Economic Studies 622, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    9. Silvia Helena Barcellos, 2010. "Legalization and the Economic Status of Immigrants," Working Papers 754, RAND Corporation.
    10. Troske, Kenneth R. & Voicu, Alexandru, 2010. "Joint estimation of sequential labor force participation and fertility decisions using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 150-169, January.
    11. Sara de la Rica & Arantza Ugidos, 1995. "¿Son las diferencias en capital humano determinantes en las diferencias salariales observadas entre hombres y mujeres?," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 19(3), pages 395-414, September.
    12. Liu, Yue & Yao, Shunbo & Lin, Ying, 2018. "Effect of Key Priority Forestry Programs on off-farm employment: Evidence from Chinese rural households," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 24-37.
    13. Longva, Pal, 2001. "Out-migration of immigrants : implications for assimilation analysis," Memorandum 04/2001, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    14. Karimi, Arizo & Lindahl, Erica & Skogman Thoursie, Peter, 2012. "Labour supply responses to paid parental leave," Working Paper Series 2012:22, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    15. Philippe Adair & Hassiba Gherbi, 2020. "The Youth Gender gap in North Africa: Income differentials and Informal Employment," Erudite Working Paper 2020-06, Erudite.
    16. Julia Schmieder & Doris Weichselbaumer & Clara Welteke & Katharina Wrohlich, 2024. "Parental Leave and Discrimination in the Labor Market," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0054, Berlin School of Economics.
    17. P.W. Miller & S. Rummery, 1989. "Gender Wage Discrimination in Australia: A reassessment," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 89-21, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    18. Aydemir, Abdurrahman & Robinson, Chris, 2006. "Return and Onward Migration Among Working Age Men," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2006273e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    19. Martin D Munk & Till Nikolka & Panu Poutvaara, 2022. "International family migration and the dual-earner model [On the origin of gender roles: women and the plough]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 263-287.
    20. Mariusz Kaszubowski & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, 2014. "Salary and reservation wage gender gaps in Polish academia," GUT FME Working Paper Series A 19, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:4:p:426-440. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.