Building on Borjas (1993) I develop an intergenerational model of self-selection of migration and education that allows for a more complex selection mechanism. In particular, it allows for the possibility that immigrants are selected differently depending on the schooling level they choose. As in Mayer (2005) I assume that agents are endowed with two abilities and use the intergenerational structure of the model to infer potential earnings of a person for different levels of education and in different countries. This makes it possible to quantify the ability or self selection bias of estimates of the return to education and migration. The model is estimated using data on Mexicans in the US from the CPS and on Mexicans residents in Mexico from the Mexican census. The findings are that there is a significant loss of human capital faced by immigrants that is not transmitted to their children. While immigrants are observed to earn less because they find it difficult to adapt their skills to the host country, their children earn more because they can inherit all the abilities of their parents, including that part that could not be used for producing earnings. Moreover, Mayer (2005) proves that the positive correlation between the two abilities creates a positive correlation between parentsÕ earnings and the probability that children attend college. In this paper, I find that this result is reinforced for migrants when they care about their children. In the case of immigrants, parents with larger amounts of intellectual ability tend to migrate more and tend to choose to remain high school educated. However, they migrate with the expectation of their children becoming college educated. Therefore, measures that rely on the earnings performance and educational attainment of immigrants underestimate the amount of human capital they bring into the host country.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis in its series Working Paper Series with number
20-07.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: