IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v16y2024i2p515-50.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Colas
  • Dominik Sachs

Abstract

Low-skilled immigrants indirectly affect public finances through their effect on resident wages and labor supply. We operationalize this indirect fiscal effect in a model of immigration and the labor market. We derive closed-form expressions for this effect in terms of estimable statistics. An empirical quantification for the United States reveals an indirect fiscal benefit for one average low-skilled immigrant of roughly $750 annually. The indirect fiscal benefit may outweigh the negative direct fiscal effect that has previously been documented. This challenges the perception of low-skilled immigration as a fiscal burden.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Colas & Dominik Sachs, 2024. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 515-550, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:515-50
    DOI: 10.1257/pol.20220176
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220176
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E179781V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220176.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20220176.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pol.20220176?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joan Monras, 2020. "Immigration and Wage Dynamics: Evidence from the Mexican Peso Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 3017-3089.
    2. Alberto Alesina & Armando Miano & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2023. "Immigration and Redistribution," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(1), pages 1-39.
    3. Joan Llull, 2018. "Immigration, Wages, and Education: A Labour Market Equilibrium Structural Model," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1852-1896.
    4. Lockwood, Benjamin B. & Weinzierl, Matthew, 2016. "Positive and normative judgments implicit in U.S. tax policy, and the costs of unequal growth and recessions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 30-47.
    5. Olivier Bargain & Kristian Orsini & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "Comparing Labor Supply Elasticities in Europe and the US: New Results," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 525, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Lutz Hendricks & Todd Schoellman, 2018. "Human Capital and Development Accounting: New Evidence from Wage Gains at Migration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 665-700.
    7. Giovanni Peri & Chad Sparber, 2016. "Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Economics of International Migration, chapter 3, pages 81-115, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Burnside, Craig, 1996. "Production function regressions, returns to scale, and externalities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 177-201, April.
    9. Michele Battisti & Gabriel Felbermayr & Giovanni Peri & Panu Poutvaara, 2018. "Immigration, Search and Redistribution: A Quantitative Assessment of Native Welfare," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 1137-1188.
    10. Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2016. "Generalized Social Marginal Welfare Weights for Optimal Tax Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(1), pages 24-45, January.
    11. Bruce D. Meyer & Wallace K. C. Mok & James X. Sullivan, 2015. "Household Surveys in Crisis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 199-226, Fall.
    12. Olivier Bargain & Kristian Orsini & Andreas Peichl, 2014. "Comparing Labor Supply Elasticities in Europe and the United States: New Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 49(3), pages 723-838.
    13. Giovanni Peri & Chad Sparber, 2016. "Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages," World Scientific Book Chapters,in: The Economics of International Migration, chapter 3, pages 81-115 World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. George J. Borjas, 2021. "The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining The Impact Of Immigration On The Labor Market," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 9, pages 235-274, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Mark Colas & Kevin Hutchinson, 2021. "Heterogeneous Workers and Federal Income Taxes in a Spatial Equilibrium," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 100-134, May.
    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. Hessami, Zohal & Schirner, Sebastian & Wobbe, Clara, 2024. "Refugee Migration and Business Registrations," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302393, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Hessami, Zohal & Schirner, Sebastian, 2024. "Immigration Shocks and Shifting Social Group Boundaries," IZA Discussion Papers 17343, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Andri Chassamboulli & Xiangbo Liu, 2024. "Immigration, Legal Status and Fiscal Impact," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 54, October.

    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. 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.
    2. Mark Colas & Dominik Sachs, 2020. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," CESifo Working Paper Series 8604, CESifo.
    3. Mark Colas & Dominik Sachs, 2020. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 38, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Sachs, Dominik & Colas, Mark, 2020. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," CEPR Discussion Papers 15325, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Ariel Burstein & Gordon Hanson & Lin Tian & Jonathan Vogel, 2020. "Tradability and the Labor‐Market Impact of Immigration: Theory and Evidence From the United States," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1071-1112, May.
    6. Sergei Guriev & Biagio Speciale & Michele Tuccio, 2019. "How do Regulated and Unregulated Labor Markets Respond to Shocks? Evidence from Immigrants During the Great Recession," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 37-76.
    7. Edo, Anthony & Rapoport, Hillel, 2019. "Minimum wages and the labor market effects of immigration," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Anthony Edo & Lionel Ragot & Hillel Rapoport & Sulin Sardoschau & Andreas Steinmayr & Arthur Sweetman, 2020. "An introduction to the economics of immigration in OECD countries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1365-1403, November.
    9. Braun, Sebastian Till & Weber, Henning, 2021. "How do regional labor markets adjust to immigration? A dynamic analysis for post-war Germany," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    10. Michal Burzynski & Giovanni Peri, 2024. "Natives Sorting and the Impact of Immigration on European Labor Markets," LISER Working Paper Series 2024-09, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    11. Aksu, Ege & Erzan, Refik & Kırdar, Murat Güray, 2022. "The impact of mass migration of Syrians on the Turkish labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    12. Biavaschi, Costanza & Burzynski, Michal & Elsner, Benjamin & Machado, Joël, 2016. "The Gain from the Drain: Skill-biased Migration and Global Welfare," IZA Discussion Papers 10275, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Eduard Storm, 2022. "Task specialization and the Native‐Foreign Wage Gap," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 36(2), pages 167-195, June.
    14. Sharpe, Jamie & Bollinger, Christopher R., 2020. "Who competes with whom? Using occupation characteristics to estimate the impact of immigration on native wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    15. Nicolò Gatti & Fabrizio Mazzonna & Raphaël Parchet & Giovanni Pica, "undated". "Opening the labor market to qualified immigrants in absence of linguistic barriers," Development Working Papers 483, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    16. Nicolò Gatti & Fabrizio Mazzonna & Raphaël Parchet & Giovanni Pica, 2023. "Opening the labor market to qualified immigrants: a double-edged sword for native employees," IdEP Economic Papers 2201, USI Università della Svizzera italiana.
    17. Ikhenaode, Bright Isaac, 2024. "Immigration, skill acquisition, and fiscal redistribution in a search equilibrium model," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-31, January.
    18. Biavaschi, Costanza & Burzyński, Michał & Elsner, Benjamin & Machado, Joël, 2020. "Taking the skill bias out of global migration," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    19. Matthias Fahn & Takeshi Murooka, 2022. "Informal Incentives and Labor Markets," Economics working papers 2022-05, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    20. Frédéric Docquier & Bright Isaac Ikhenaode & Hendrik Scheewel, 2022. "Immigration, welfare, and inequality: How much does the labor market specification matter?," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 1315-1347, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J82 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Labor Force Composition

    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:aea:aejpol:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:515-50. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.