IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/19204.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is There a Numbers versus Rights Trade-off in Immigration Policy? What the Data Say

Author

Listed:
  • Cummins, Matthew
  • Rodriguez, Francisco

Abstract

This paper explores the empirical support behind the idea that there is a trade-off between the size of the migrant population and the rights and entitlements enjoyed by immigrants. We first look at the empirical correlation between measures of migrants’ rights and the size of the stock of immigrants in a number of existing databases. Using data on migrants’ rights from three recent studies—the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Migrant Accessibility Index, the Migration Policy Group and British Council’s Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) and the Human Development Report Office’s Migrant Entitlements and Services Index—we fail to find a systematic correlation of any sign. We then turn to regression analysis using OLS and instrumental variable techniques and again fail to find evidence in favor of the existence of a correlation. The numerical magnitudes of the correlations suggest a quantitatively small relationship which in several cases is positive rather than negative.

Suggested Citation

  • Cummins, Matthew & Rodriguez, Francisco, 2009. "Is There a Numbers versus Rights Trade-off in Immigration Policy? What the Data Say," MPRA Paper 19204, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:19204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19204/1/MPRA_paper_19204.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Clemens & Claudio Montenegro & Lant Pritchett, 2008. "The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the U.S. Border," Working Papers 148, Center for Global Development.
    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. Jeni Klugman & Isabel Medalho Pereira, 2009. "Assessment of National Migration Policies: An emerging picture on admissions, treatment and enforcement in developing and developed countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2009-48, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), revised Oct 2009.
    2. John Gibson & David McKenzie & Halahingano Rohorua, 2014. "Development Impacts of Seasonal and Temporary Migration: A Review of Evidence from the Pacific and Southeast Asia," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 18-32, January.
    3. Andreas T. Schmidt & Daan Juijn, 2024. "Economic inequality and the long-term future," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 23(1), pages 67-99, February.

    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. Ravallion, Martin, 2019. "Global inequality when unequal countries create unequal people," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 85-97.
    2. Michael A. Clemens & Claudio Montenegro & Lant Pritchett, 2016. "Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers," CID Working Papers 316, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    3. Arslan, Aslıhan & Effenberger, Alexandra & Lücke, Matthias & Omar Mahmoud, Toman, 2009. "International labor migration and remittances: Towards development-friendly migration policies," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 32961, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Filipe R. Campante & Davin Chor, 2012. "Why Was the Arab World Poised for Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, and the Arab Spring," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 167-188, Spring.
    5. Kate Ambler & Diego Aycinena & Dean Yang, 2015. "Channeling Remittances to Education: A Field Experiment among Migrants from El Salvador," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 207-232, April.
    6. Emmanuelle Auriol & Alice Mesnard, 2016. "Sale of Visas: a Smuggler's Final Song?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 646-678, October.
    7. Philip L. Martin, 2016. "Migration, Trade and Remittances: Low- and High-Skilled Workers," Remittances Review, Remittances Review, vol. 1(1), pages 39-52, October.
    8. Campante, Filipe R. & Chor, Davin, 2014. "“The people want the fall of the regime”: Schooling, political protest, and the economy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 495-517.
    9. Risse, Mathias, 2009. "Immigration, Ethics and the Capabilities Approach," MPRA Paper 19218, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Colas, Mark & Sachs, Dominik, 2022. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 352, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    11. John Gibson & David McKenzie & Halahingano Rohorua, 2014. "Development Impacts of Seasonal and Temporary Migration: A Review of Evidence from the Pacific and Southeast Asia," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 18-32, January.
    12. Michael A. Clemens & David McKenzie, 2018. "Why Don't Remittances Appear to Affect Growth?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(612), pages 179-209, July.
    13. David McKenzie & Dean Yang, 2015. "Evidence on Policies to Increase the Development Impacts of International Migration," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 155-192.
    14. Stefan Gruber & Gregor Sand, 2022. "Does Migration Pay Off in Later Life? Income and Subjective Well-Being of Older Migrants in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 969-988, April.
    15. Stillman, Steven & Gibson, John & McKenzie, David & Rohorua, Halahingano, 2015. "Miserable Migrants? Natural Experiment Evidence on International Migration and Objective and Subjective Well-Being," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 79-93.
    16. Irfan Kanat & Yili Hong & T. S. Raghu, 2018. "Surviving in Global Online Labor Markets for IT Services: A Geo-Economic Analysis," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(4), pages 893-909, December.
    17. Slobodan DJADJIC & Frédéric DOCQUIER & Michael S. MICHAEL, 2019. "Optimal Education Policy and Human Capital Accumulation in the Context of Brain Drain," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(4), pages 271-303, December.
    18. Clemens, Michael A. & Montenegro, Claudio E. & Pritchett, Lant, 2008. "The place premium : wage differences for identical workers across the US border," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4671, The World Bank.
    19. Ambrosini, J. William & Mayr, Karin & Peri, Giovanni & Radu, Dragos, 2012. "The Selection of Migrants and Returnees in Romania: Evidence and Long-Run Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 6664, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. David Roodman, 2020. "The domestic economic impacts of immigration," Papers 2007.10269, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    migration rights and entitlements; measurement; migration data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:19204. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.