International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills

Miguel Flores, Alexander Patt, Jens Ruhose () and Simon Wiederhold ()

No 84a, CID Working Papers from Center for International Development at Harvard University

Abstract: We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than non-migrants. Conditional on occupational skills, education and earnings no longer predict migration decisions. Differential labor-market returns to occupational skills explain the observed selection pattern and significantly outperform previously used returns-to-skills measures in predicting migration. Results are persistent over time and hold within narrowly defined regional, sectoral, and occupational labor markets.

Keywords: occupational skills; emigrant selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J24 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2021)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
Working Paper: International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cid:wpfacu:84a

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