Does economic self-interest determine public attitudes toward immigrants? An econometric case study in Japan

We examine two economic self-interest hypotheses of the determinants of public attitudes towards immigrants: (1) labor market hypothesis, which states that the employment and wage impacts of immigration determine public attitudes and (2) the welfare state hypoth- esis, which states that natives negatively perceive immigrants for fear of straining the country’s welfare budget. The first hypothesis predicts that natives’ education will af- fect pro-immigrant attitudes more positively when the immigrants are from lower-income countries. The second hypothesis predicts that natives’ income will affect the pro-immigrant attitudes more negatively when the immigrants are from lower-income countries. We use the Japanese General Social Survey, which asks respondents’ tolerance toward immigrants from different countries, allowing us to remove the unobserved individual characteristics in a fixed effect estimation. Our results show no difference in education and income effects on pro-immigrant attitudes regardless of whether immigrants are from high- or low-income countries. We conclude that economic self-interests do not explain Japanese public attitudes towards immigrants. We discuss policy implications on how to improve public attitudes to- wards immigrants.