Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs
01 Dec 2002-International Migration Review (Center for Migration Studies)-Vol. 36, Iss: 4, pp 1093-1123
TL;DR: This paper examined the impact of welfare reform on welfare use in immigrant households and found that immigrants living in California experienced a precipitous drop in their welfare participation rate (relative to natives) and immigrants living outside California experienced roughly the same decline in participation rates as natives.
Abstract: This article examines the impact of the 1996 welfare reform legislation on welfare use in immigrant households. Although the data indicate that the welfare participation rate of immigrants declined relative to that of natives at the national level, this national trend is entirely attributable to the trends in welfare participation in California. Immigrants living in California experienced a precipitous drop in their welfare participation rate (relative to natives). Immigrants living outside California experienced roughly the same decline in participation rates as natives. The potential impact of welfare reform on immigrants residing outside California was neutralized because many state governments responded to the federal legislation by offering state-funded programs to their immigrant populations and because the immigrants themselves responded by becoming naturalized citizens. The very steep decline of immigrant welfare participation in California is harder to understand, but could be a by-product of the changed political and social environment following the enactment of Proposition 187. It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state. Milton Friedman.
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TL;DR: The authors proposed a disaggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains: state, market, welfare, and culture.
Abstract: How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to prove both futile and misleading, I propose a radically dis-aggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains — state, market, welfare, and culture. Because some but not all of the regulatory institutions in these domains were created with immigrant incorporation in mind, national incorporation frameworks are not fully cohesive, are constantly changing, and at best can be described as belonging to a handful of loosely connected syndromes.
267 citations
Cites background from "Welfare Reform and Immigrant Partic..."
...Although their presentation is inconsistent (p. 122), they conclude that some generous welfare states do act as magnets attracting migrants, the existence of benefit programs distorts the composition of migrant streams, migrant dependency IMMIGRANT INCORPORATION IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES 957 on welfare is more extensive than their socioeconomic characteristics predict, and there are strong residual dependency effects in countries with generous programs (pp. 89-90; CJ: Borjas, 2003; Reitz, 1998)....
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...89-90; CJ: Borjas, 2003; Reitz, 1998). Comparative data on the perception of electorates in Western states about the nexus between migrants and welfare usage is scarce. Brucker et al. (2002), reviewing Eurobarometer polls, conclude, “the claims that migrants are a burden on the welfare state and a threat to the labor market show up in the measured opinions” (p....
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TL;DR: The strategies that researchers have employed to tease out effects of public policies for immigrants' health, the methodological challenges of undertaking such studies, their varying impacts on immigrant health, and steps that can be undertaken to improve the health of immigrants and their families are explored.
Abstract: Public policies play a crucial role in shaping how immigrants adapt to life in the United States. Federal, state, and local laws and administrative practices impact immigrants’ access to education,...
185 citations
TL;DR: The Personal Responsibility, Work, and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) as mentioned in this paper made non-citizens ineligible for federally funded food assistance and reduced Food Stamp allotments for households containing a mixture of citizens and noncitizens.
124 citations
TL;DR: It is found that immigrants recently granted dual nationality rights are more likely to naturalize relative to immigrants from other Latin American countries, and experience relative employment and earnings gains, together with drops in welfare use.
Abstract: In the 1990s, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Brazil passed dual citizenship laws granting their expatriates the right to naturalize in the receiving country without losing their nationality of origin. I estimate the effects of these new laws on naturalization rates and labor market outcomes in the United States. Based on data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses, I find that immigrants recently granted dual nationality rights are more likely to naturalize relative to immigrants from other Latin American countries. They also experience relative employment and earnings gains, together with drops in welfare use, suggesting that dual citizenship rights not only increase the propensity to naturalize but may also promote economic assimilation. The effects of dual citizenship on improved economic performance, if mediated through naturalization, are consistent with American citizenship conferring greater economic opportunities.
120 citations
TL;DR: The authors provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems, and illustrate some of these issues by looking at immigrants welfare use in Ireland and the UK.
Abstract: The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems. While our focus is largely on papers looking at the European case, we also draw on studies from the United States, in particular on issues where the European literature is thin. One set of papers asks whether immigrants who are more likely to use welfare are attracted to more generous welfare states. The results from these papers are not clear-cut. Another set of papers asks if immigrants use welfare more intensively than natives and if they assimilate out of or into welfare participation. In most cases, the unadjusted data shows higher use of welfare by immigrants although for some countries, for example Germany, this difference can be explained by differences in characteristics. Yet another set of papers finds that the rate of welfare use by existing migrants can influence the welfare use of newly arrived co-nationals. We illustrate some of these issues by looking at immigrant welfare use in Ireland and the UK. Immigrants in the UK appear to use welfare more intensively than natives but the opposite appears to be the case in Ireland.
119 citations
References
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TL;DR: The National Research Council's Panel on the Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration as mentioned in this paper examined the economic demographic and fiscal effects of immigration to the United States and examined what immigrants gain by immigrating and what they contribute to the country.
Abstract: This report was prepared by the National Research Councils Panel on the Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration and concerns the economic demographic and fiscal effects of immigration to the United States. "Three key questions are explored: What is the influence of immigration on the overall economy especially national and regional labor markets? What are the overall effects of immigration on federal state and local government budgets? [and] What effects will immigration have on the future size and makeup of the nations population over the next 50 years? The study examines what immigrants gain by coming to the United States and what they contribute to the country the skills of immigrants and those of native-born Americans the experiences of immigrant women and other groups and much more. It offers examples of how to measure the impact of immigration on government revenues and expenditures--estimating one years fiscal impact in California New Jersey and the United States and projecting the long-run fiscal effects on government revenues and expenditures. Also included is background information on immigration policies and practices and data on where immigrants come from what they do in America and how they will change the nations social fabric in the decades to come." (EXCERPT)
751 citations
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TL;DR: The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high‐benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives.
Abstract: This paper investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income-maximizing behavior implies that foreign-born welfare recipients unlike their native-born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high-benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives. As a result, the welfare participation rate of immigrants is much more sensitive to changes in welfare benefits than that of natives.
706 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that immigration policy should be viewed as a vital part of fiscal policy, and made a case that skill-based immigration policy is essential to the US economic well-being.
Abstract: This paper explores the fiscal implications of immigration to the US, and argues that immigration policy should be viewed as a vital part of fiscal policy. In particular, a case is made that skill ...
587 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits and found that welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high-benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives.
Abstract: This article investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income‐maximizing behavior implies that foreign‐born welfare recipients, unlike their native‐born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high‐benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives. As a result, the welfare participation rate of immigrants is much more sensitive to changes in welfare benefits than that of natives.
506 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors studied the extent to which immigrants participate in the many programs that make up the welfare state and found that the difference in the probability of receiving cash benefits is small, but the gap widens once other programs are included in the analysis: 21 percent of immigrant households receive some type of assistance, as compared to only 14 percent of native households.
Abstract: This paper documents the extent to which immigrants participate in the many programs that make up the welfare state. The immigrant- native difference in the probability of receiving cash benefits is small, but the gap widens once other programs are included in the analysis: 21 percent of immigrant households receive some type of assistance, as compared to only 14 percent of native households. The types of benefits received by earlier immigrants influence the types of benefits received by newly arrived immigrants. Hence there might be ethnic networks which transmit information about the availability of particular benefits to new immigrants.
421 citations