Economic Outcomes of Immigrants v. Their Stay at Home Counterparts: What the Data Shows
by
Mike Kimel
Economic Outcomes of Immigrants v. Their Stay at Home Counterparts: What the Data Shows
In this post, I will test whether people from countries with relatively poor economies also tend to do poorly when they relocate to the United States. As an example, GDP per capita for Haiti is much lower than GDP per capita for Hong Kong. Does the available data also say Haitian immigrants to the US generate lower income per capita than immigrants from Hong Kong? In general, as we will see below, the answer is yes.
Data used in this post comes from two sources. The first is GDP per capita, by country, obtained from the World Bank. The post also uses information obtained from the Census Department’s 2014 American Community Survey. In particular, the post uses the 2014 per capita income of immigrants to the US by nation of origin. It also uses the percentage of the immigrants from a given country that have arrived in the US prior to the year 2000. That data is kind of unwieldy to find, but the starting point is here. To be clear, immigrants in this source are foreign born, which is to say first generation only. Only immigrants alive at the time of the survey are included.
There are 72 countries for which there is data on per capita income for that country’s immigrants to the US (from the Census) and for which 2014 GDP per capita is available (from the World Bank). The graph below shows per capita income for those immigrants along the X axis, and GDP per capita along the Y axis.
Figure 1
The correlation is 0.7, which is fairly high. That is to say, in general, the poorer a country is, the worse its immigrants fare in the US. This is because on aggregate the skills and culture of people living in poor countries do not command a high price on the world market. Such a combination of skills and culture will also not command a high price in a large open economy like the US. (Yes, there are exceptions. Some will be covered in later posts.)
But… does the problem solve itself? Do immigrants from poor countries who are in the US long enough abandon less successful cultures, develop new skills, and start performing more like natives and less like their stay-at-home former compatriots? Or is something akin to a “water seeking its own level” effect? If so, we would expect that after the shock of immigration wears off, immigrants from country X converge back for better or worse to the same levels of performance we see in country X.
It turns out we can answer that question too. The Census data provides breakdowns for the percentage of the immigrants from each country who arrived before the year 2000. (Arrivals between 2000 and 2009, and from 2010 to 2014 are also provided but are generally not used in in this post.) The third quartile for “arrived before the year 2000” is 68.3%. That is, for a quarter of the countries in the sample, 68.3% or more of its (living) immigrants to the US arrived before the year 2000. For example, fully 89.5% of live immigrants from Greece, and 74.9% of live immigrants from Cambodia arrived in the US before the year 2000. (Interestingly but not surprisingly, the UK is not in this longest-established quartile in large part because immigration from the UK ramped up heavily in recent years.)
Here’s what the graph looks like for groups of living immigrants with the longest tenure in the US:
Figure 2
The correlation between how well the native country does, and how well its immigrants do in the US rises to 0.84 when only the top quartile of most established immigrant groups is used. From this, it would appear that skillsets and cultures not only survive the move to the US, but in general, they may barely change among first generation immigrants. And since parents’ income is often a strong predictor (if not determinant) of a child’s income, it would seem that the effect can continue for generations. What my old econometrics professor used to call casual empiricism also appears to bear this out, at least for those who aren’t shocked by the results.
I would also note one extremely important implication –
I will have a few more posts using this data set, as it may provide some insights into the questions I am ultimately interested in answering, namely:
1. What are the factors that contribute to success or failure in a given group?
2. Can we weight the scale toward success, and if so, how?
3. What are the implications of situations in which traits that bias toward failure are resistant to change?
4. With each of the above, how do we avoid trampling on the rights of individuals?
In closing – as always, if you want my data, drop me a line at my first name (mike) dot my last name (kimel – that’s with one m, not two) at gmail dot com. Occasionally I get data requests six or seven years after a post. While I always try to comply with these requests, I reserve the right to change computers, have them stolen, or to drop dead if too much time has elapsed between this writing and a request for data occurs.
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Tonu.
Loved it.
In further news, I am old enough to remember watching the serials that used to precede movies. Far superior to the 20 minutes of commercials we have these days, but they were badly produced and badly acted.
They kept you going by having the end always leave suspense about what is going to happen next week. Eventually, the wretchedness of the acting, directing and plot lines made you stop reading.
I feel the same about this series.
Tonu and EMichael,
Well, some folks think every bit of data I put up is just another coincidence, even when, such as in this case, I predicted the coincidence in an earlier post. Not a problem. I like playing with data. Do the coincidences will keep piling up.
Here’s a thought. Why don’t you make a prediction that fits your view of the world and doesn’t fit mine. Then hunt down some data. Or maybe I will hunt it down. Like that you can help me generate coincidences. But make it something I have stated, not something you misread.
My dinky ethnic group in the last Canadian census shows that our males remain the second most financially successful —- our females the most successful of the females. Does that make us superior beings simply through first level correlation analysis, Mike? I suggest you think more deeply about what you are analyzing before reaching conclusions.
Tonu,
There are groups of people which have been underperforming by various economic measuresdespite various government programs and laws and whatnot intended to rectify that underperformance. Some of the attempts to rectify the problem date back for many decades. Despite the effort and expense, the politically correct remedies have not worked yet.
So we have a few options. Option 1 is to keep doing what hasn’t worked which seems to be the approach our political class favors. But there are alternatives if you don’t like the idea that easily differentiated groups will form a permanent underclass. One of those, call it option 2, is to drop the posturing and figure out what the problem really is and how to improve the situation for millions of people who are currently being consigned to that permanent underclass, and for the rest of us.
There are other options. I want not part of them. But by ceding the conversation to those who would push those options, you make those options more likely to come to pass once society’s patience for option 1 is exhausted. And that will come because the average person isn’t blind to outcomes.
As to one group being superior – that’s what you brought up, not me. But I would note that maintaining policies that perpetuate an underclass is precisely what you do if you believe the people who make up the underclass are inferior.
So the way to fix US GDP growth is to change the incentives of nations with.lower GDP per capita so that their citizens don’t want to immigrate to the US, Or perhaps the alternative solution — only allow the elite well to do citizens of higher GDP per capital nations’ citizens to immigrate to the US.
This would leave out Indians of course, and naturally Mexicans and all of Africa most of Asia except perhaps the Japanese, but include therefore only the high GDP per capital northern European nations and citizens of the tiny oil shiekdoms (who have zero interest in emigrating anyway).
Nice… Christian white folks from Northern European nations are qualified to immigrate (per GDP/capital criteria statistical inferences) but nobody else is.
Sounds just like the right wing’s white superiorty racists. Gee Mike, did you come up with this all by yourself? If so perhaps you should join the KKK or similar racist group to promote this further…. your statistical inferences dictate it..
Perhaps everybody (but me and a few others) are misunderstandng and misjudging Mikes inferences and “strong statistical foundations” for those inferences.
What Mike is inferring it seems to me is that “to make America great again” its immigration policies should revert to those that he finds to be preferable (based on his fine statistical prowess to those we’ve had since the great migrations from the huddled masses in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A direct result of this inference is that then of course the illegal south American immigrants should be deported forthwith including any that were born in the US and have natural US citizenship since they were born of illegals, to mitigate as much as possible the future demise of US GDP per capita, which is of course directly due to allowing cultures that are lazy and otherwise prone to not having the superior culture of northern European whites.
Another direct inference is that those cultures that are not like those we inherited from the northern European white settlers to the colonies over 250 year ago are a drag on US’s prosperity and greatness. I suppose by this inference Mike is recommending therefore that only white christian cultures should be considered to immigrate to the US. … that is if we want to preserve our greatness or resurrect it in future.
Maybe that’s what Mike is actually trying to instill on us… help us out of our ignorant state of understanding what makes America great.
I’m not sure how he thinks we should deal with all the ancestors of the African slaves we imported and then made citizens of the US after the Civil War though, or the Mexicans who we allowed to remain in the Western US territories when we overthrew and took possession of their territories in the west though. Maybe he thinks they assimilated enough by now..
Longttooth,
You don’t have to read between the lines. I have stated my intentions very clearly and precisely including in this post. Do a Ctrl-F for “I will have a few more posts using this data set, as it may provide some insights into the questions I am ultimately interested in answering, namely”
Then read the sentences that follow. See. Plain english.
I’ve also noted in past posts that I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, such as FGM and child molestation, which you have defended in comments to this post – see comment posted on Oct 22, 2016 at 3:21AM. As I noted in my response to you, if opposing such practices makes me a racist, so be it.
If most Americans find something immoral does that make it immoral?
Longttooth,
“If most Americans find something immoral does that make it immoral?”
Of course not. But if there is a country where wearing red bandannas is considered immoral, it would make little sense for a foreigner to move there who insisted that wearing red bandannas is a part of his/her culture that he/she should be allowed to practice at will. I see no reason the red bandanna wearer should want to move to that country, or why the locals should allow him/her to move there. All I see is unnecessary friction.
Bear in mind also that the immigrant is the supplicant. Immigration is a privilege, not a right.
Additionally, if the immigrant wants to move to a country, it is because the country offers something he/she cannot get at home. In many cases, immigrants move for economic reasons. Who is to say that the avoidance of red bandannas is not part of the secret sauce that makes the country perform better than the prospective immigrant’s home country? The immigrant who insists on changing his adopted country could be strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I can think of several ways that keeping bacha bazi and FGM illegal and frowned upon benefits the US economy. For example, I would guess that legalizing bacha bazi creates a large number of little boys who are traumatized for life. I would expect FGM causes trauma for little girls. Fewer traumatized people is a good thing for the economy, even if your sense of morality is too warped to think its a good thing in general.
The onus should be on the immigrant who wants to move to a country, not on the country to which he/she wants to move.
I asked ““If most Americans find something immoral does that make it immoral?”
You responded: “Of course not.”
Therefore what is the relevance of your statement: “I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ”
Since you agree that just because “most” Americans find something immoral doesn’t make it immoral, then why od you oppose importing cultural practices that “most Americans” find immoral?
Mike since you brought up “morality” and that you “against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral”, I thought it might be instructive to use a dominant US example of “morality” to determine whether you believe Europeans should therefore also be excluded from immigration because their “morality” very different than the U.S., that is if you equate abortion prevalence to morals.
I’m using 2008 abortion data from Europe only because it was readily available in a quick google search::
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2088840/Abortion-statistics-Nearly-pregnancies-Europe-end-termination.html
I then looked up the stats from CDC for the same year (2008) to user in comparison.
Live Birth & Fetal Deaths (Still Births):
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_08.pdf
Abortions:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6015a1.htm?s_cid=ss6015a1_w#Tab2
I use the statistic of the rate of abortions per pregnancy since it is only those who become pregnant that can decide whether or not to abort.. hence this is a more direct measure of abortion “morals”.
In Europe 30% of pregnancies ended in abortions in 2008. In the US just 15.6% [see note below] of pregnancies (probably less) ended in abortions. So Europeans have twice the rate of abortions per pregnancy than in the US.
Thus Europe’s morality on abortions is “less moral” from a US “most Americans” point of view, or stated differently, the US “morals” on abortion is twice as moral as Europe’s.
Note on US abortions per pregnancy:
Pregnancies = Live Births + Still Births + Miscarriages + Abortions
The above links provide the data on Live Births and Still-Births and Abortions in 2008 in the US. I cannot find statistics on Miscarriages so the number of pregnancies in the US is higher than the I report and use for the Abortions per Pregnancy.
Total Pregnancies in US in 2008: 5.28 million
Total Abortions in US in 2008:; 825 thousand
Abortions per Pregnancy 156 per 1000 Pregnancies = 15.6%
So by your own statement you say you are “against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral”, then because Europeans are at least twice as prone to get abortions when pregnant, does this make the following statements True or False?
1. Most Americans find European morals on abortions to be immoral.
2. If 1) is true, then you are against importing Europeans to the US
Mike, in case you’re in any doubt about what “most Americans” think about abortion “morality”, I cite the 2016 Gallop Survey responses to show that 56% of Americans oppose the abortion rights European have while 41% favor them (the remainder are undecided).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
“Should Abortion be:
29% – Legal Under Any Circumstance?”
50% – Legal Only Under Certain Circumstances?”
19% – Illegal in All Circumstances?”
Of those who responded Legal Only under Certain Circumstances, the question was asked:
“Do you think abortion should be legal in most circumstances or only a few?”
29% – Legal under Any Circumstance (this % is carried down from the prior question)
12%- Legal Under Most Circumstances (this is one break-out from the 50% in the prior question)
37% – Legal in Only a Few Circumstances (this is the other break-out from the 50% in the prior question)
19% – Illegal in All Circumstances (this % is carried down from the prior question)
The US’s proportion who believe it should be unrestricted or nearly unrestricted is 41% (29% + 12%).
.
On the other hand 56% of the total (37% + 19%) think it should be restricted to Only a Few Circumstances or completely Illegal.
So it’s pretty clear that the US majority by a margin of 15% believe Europe’s culture related to abortion rights are not “moral” by US standards of “most Americans”
Longttooth,
“Therefore what is the relevance of your statement: “I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ””
As I pointed out in my answer – because it generates un-necessary friction and can also reduce economic output. I answered it in detail. You are ignoring the bulk of my answer.
If you invite a guest to dinner at your home, you would probably be willing to accommodate some requests. Perhaps the guest is allergic to nuts, or is a a vegetarian, or maybe she keeps kosher or halal. Most people would be perfectly willing to accommodate those issues. But if the guest insists on the right to engage in a bit of bacha bazi with a five year old boy before dinner, most people will at a minimum cancel dinner plans and will probably call the police. It is not up to host to change his mores to accommodate the guest. It is up to the guest to live up to the standards of the host. Otherwise, the guest is free to go elsewhere.
It isn’t like there aren’t plenty of countries where bacha bazi and FGM are n’t viewed as perfectly acceptable and part of the culture so potential immigrants who want to engage in such practices have plenty of choices of where to move if they want.
Longttooth,
Abortion, even late term abortion, doesn’t work as an example for you:
1. From your figures, it would seem that most Americans favor at least some right to abortion. Most Americans do not favor at least some right to bacha bazi with small boys or FGM of little girls.
2. As a society, even where we oppose abortion, we do not do so vehemently. In general, people who had abortions are not seen as victims the way people who had bacha bazi or FGM performed on them are. As a general rule, society also don’t attach a stigma to abortion providers the way we attach a stigma to those who engage in bacha bazi or FGM. Not just that, most Americans are enthusiastic about locking up practitioners.
3. If you have seen evidence that there are a lot of European women emigrating to the US, and who, upon arrival in the US begin having late term abortions in contravention of American law, please share. Ditto immigrant doctors who begin offering late term abortions in contravention of US law, please share.
4. If you have evidence that there are a large number of late term abortions being performed in this country that violate US law, and your evidence also shows that the majority of them are performed on first or second generation European immigrants to the US, feel free to share that.
IMO, Mike has started with an assumption — possibly an axiom — to bolster his analysis: STEM is the only variable of interest in his mind. That assumption might be valid on the short term related to GDP. but possibly very mistaken in the longer term where the Irish poets might actually be ameliorating the excesses of STEM to create a longer sustainable society,
Tonu,
That was an earlier post. And that earlier post had this statement in it:
That assumption, as stated at the time, was for that post. You may have noticed that there has been no mention of STEM, science, technology, engineering, or math in this post, for example. None Zero. It also isn’t implied anywhere in this post. So it should be fairly obvious that STEM is not the only variable of interest in my mind. You actually have it backwards. STEM was a topic used to broach the concept of culture, its persistence, and how it affects economic and social outcomes. Economic and social outcome are the topic that interests me. That is stated explicitly in this post. I’ve stated as much before. And nothing I have written so far contradicts that.
You wont find “stick those people in death camps” by selecting the third letter from the second word in sentences with a prime number of syllables in the post. (At least I don’t think so – truthfully I haven’t checked.) There’s no morse code or dog whistle. There is no reason to try to divine my purpose by reading chicken entrails from the light of the full moon.
You have been writing a series, Mike. Why do you find it necessary to disavow one early point as being irrelevant to the rest?
Mike,
I asked ““If most Americans find something immoral does that make it immoral?”
You responded: “Of course not.”
Therefore what is the relevance of your statement: “I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ”
You responded:
“…because it generates un-necessary friction and can also reduce economic output.
Let me understand the logic you used:
Whatever “most Americans” think is immoral, whether it has anything to do with morality or not, is how “America” behaves and acts, because anything else is an unnecessary [internal] friction among “Americans” and any [internal] frictions reduce economic output.
Since you declare that there are un-necessary rinctions then there mu also exit necessary frictions and thus there are only two types of [internal] frictions:
1. The unnecessary kind which you assert come from any immigrant or immigrant group which does not have the same beliefs as “most Americans”,
2 The necessary kind which I presume (correct me if my presumption is incorrect) is restricted therefore to only those frictions Americans create [internally] without the influence of other cultures being imported to “America”, presumably because importing them creates additional argument and divisiveness among “Americans” and and thus “frictions”.
From that then those ideas which are promoted and/or imported by Americans from other cultures but without importing the people from those cultures — from experience abroad, from books, from exchanges among international commercial actors, from news articles, from documentaries, from higher education studies of other cultures, may also create frictions among Americans, but these sources of frictions are of the necessary kind.
Thus the distinction between necessary and un-necessary frictions is solely whether actual foreign people bring the new ideas from their cultures to the awareness of Americans by their physical presence in America .. which I must assume also includes those who come here for vacations, visit relatives and friends, work here temporarily on business assignments, etc.
Thus your logic is that American GDP will improve & or not deteriorate if we keep foreign people who do not have the same beliefs as “most Americans” physically out of the country, but GDP will not be adversely affected and even positively effected if Americans bring foreign ideas and beliefs from those other cultures into America themselves which then necessarily create frictions of the “necessary” kind.
Am I mischaracterizing your logic to say it’s the quintessential definition of xenophobia — keeping foreign people with different belief systems than “most Americans” out of the country but that the same belief systems from those other cultures can be brought into America by Americans even though they “necessary” frictions?
:xenophobia – fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign (Merriam Webster)
Mike
Your logic and reasoning can also be described more loosely as “provincialism”.
Mike,
I used the moral notion of abortion in Europe and American to distinguish between what you belived: which was
“I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ””
I cited the definitive statistic on the single largest moral issue in America..It is the single most divisive issue on what people refer to as “moral” behavior. It is a vehemently argued issue and has caused murders of practitioners of abortion States have attempted by laws to restrict any form of abortion (early, late, or totally)
The proportion of American who believe abortion is “moral” is ~ 41%, while those who believe it is immoral is ~ 56%.. and those 56% belive it is immoral enough to restrict it in almost all possible cases…. the exceptions being perhaps “life of mother” at risk, or “incest or rape” at most.
This is the “most Americans” moral belief. In stark contrast to this is the European moral belief on abortion — that it is not restricted or nearly not restricted at all. This is evident by the fact that the reported rate of abortions in Europe is 30% of pregnancies ending in abortion, while the same measure for the US is less than 15.6% of pregnancies end in abortion…at least half the European rate.
Thus from what you stated is your belief that:
” “I am against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ””
Then the conclusion from your belief is that you are against importing Europeans to America because they have at least one cultural practice that most Americans find to be “immoral”.
You cannot argue that abortion isn’t a moral issue in America, unless our are lying to yourself or denying reality.
You cannot argue that most Americans (by a wide margin of 15%) find abortion to be immoral, unless for the same reasons as above..
Thus by your statement you believe Europeans should not be allowed to immigrate to America. That is the only rational, objective, and logical conclusion that can be drawn from your statement.
Now it is perhaps possible you didn’t mean what you said — that is you may not have meant you were “…against importing cultural practices that most Americans find immoral, ”
I say that though only as a possibility because suddenly in your response you shifted the definitive conditional from “immorality” to other conditioals:
– “most Americans favor at least some right to abortion”
– as a society “we do not do so [oppose abortion] vehemently”
– you insert American “law” as the issue instead of morality
“some rights” are not at all the same as Europeans “nearly all rights”.
As a society we (the “most Americans” we) do in fact oppose abortion vehemently in most (only extremely restricted conditions) abortions. so that part of your shift is simply a false statement of fact
You insert American law to substitute for or in addition to “morality”
So is it that you are against importing what “most Americans” believe is “immoral” or is it that you are against importing cultural practices that are not supported by current American “law’?
Or is it that you are against importing cultural practices that “most Americans” believe are only “partially unacceptable”…. that is to say with restrictions of some nature and magnitude — which is an undefinable conditional having no known or objective and measurable bounds other than by your own personally selective opinion on what the conditional limits shall be, or perhaps by some personally selected sub-group(s) of Americans who are collectively in the majority only by your own selection criteria?
Or perhaps you deem “vehemently opposed” by some other undefined and subjective valuation of your own choosing rather than a measurable objective criteria?
Mike, don’t your realize that you’ve changed your prior conditional from “immoral” to “American law” and the subjective and immeasurable “partially unacceptable” and to a subjective immeasurable “vehemance” levels of what “most Americans” object to? .
I can only surmise that your shift from the conditional “immoral” criteria is because you don’t want to exclude Europeans from that group of cultures which “most Americans” find to practice “immoral” behaviors. Which is to say that you have pre-determined your selection criteria for which group of foreigners you deem acceptable to be imported to America independent of any objective criteria..
Tonu,
I don’t think I disavowed anything. The words “Assume for this post” quoted in my last comment were not merely decorative. The assumption was truly meant for that post.
Longttooth,
As I have stated in other posts, the fact that America produced a Dylan Roof is not justification for importing Syed Farouk.
“Farook was born in Chicago, Illinois”
“Do immigrants from poor countries who are in the US long enough abandon less successful cultures, develop new skills, and start performing more like natives and less like their stay-at-home former compatriots?”
How do the data rule out that “it takes money to make money”, and refugees seldom bring money with them?
Arne,
“How do the data rule out that “it takes money to make money”, and refugees seldom bring money with them?”
It does not. The takes money to make money scenario is the next thing coming into play in this series of posts. (I’ve already completed the next post.) There are a lot of issues that need to be understood if we want to understand immigration. I cannot cover every nuance on every issue on every post.
Arne,
You are right about Farook. It was his parents that came from Pakistan. I need to do a better job of keeping first generation immigrants who become terrorists apart from second generation immigrants who become terrorists.