IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/werepe/30643.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael

Abstract

This paper estimates the total number of irregular immigrants residing in Spain from 2002 to2019 and studies their nationality, sex, gender and sectoral composition. Using the residualmethod and combining microdata sources from the Spanish Labour Force Survey and SocialSecurity registers I find that by the end of 2019 there was around 390,000-470,000 irregularimmigrants in Spain, which account for 11-13% of the total non-EU immigrants. Irregularimmigrants are younger than the regular ones, they are predominantly from South and CentralAmerica and they are concentrated in the accommodation and food activities and the activitieshousehold sector. Using the most updated wave of the EU-SILC data for Spain, I find a positivedirect fiscal impact of the non-EU immigration. This impact is 75% higher than for the natives'households, mainly explained by their younger age structure. Once education and health publicsystems are taken into account, the fiscal impact gap between the two type of householdsvanishes. I also find large fiscal costs associated to maintaining the irregularity status. Last,my estimates suggest that the potential positive gains from legalising the current status of theirregular immigrants are around 3,300 euros yearly by regularized worker.

Suggested Citation

  • Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael, 2020. "The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain," UC3M Working papers. Economics 30643, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:30643
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/rest/api/core/bitstreams/1f19ed21-ac46-4007-9637-bd60e73bbc19/content
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Monras, Joan & Polo-Muro, Eduardo & Vázquez-Grenno, Javier, 2023. "Labor Market Stability and Fertility Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 18613, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. McCully, Brett A., 2024. "Immigrants, legal status, and illegal trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    3. Jesús Fernández-Huertas Moraga, 2021. "Inmigración y políticas migratorias en España," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2021-10, FEDEA.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigration;

    JEL classification:

    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:cte:werepe:30643. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Ana Poveda (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.eco.uc3m.es/ .

    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.