PSC In The News
Frey says more deaths than births among white Americans signals big demographic shifts
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Highlights
Trainees Nelson Saldaña, Sarah Seelye and Ellen Compernolle awarded PSC grants
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Yu Xie to give DBASSE's David Lecture April 30, 2013 on "Is American Science in Decline?"
U-M grad programs do well in latest USN&WR "Best" rankings
Back in September
Follow us Fertility, Migration, Altruism and Growth
Eli Berman (Boston University )
11/23/1998, at noon in room 6050 ISR-Thompson.
(with Zaur Rzakhanov)
Consider migration to a higher income region as a human capital investment in which parents bear migration costs and children share returns. Migrants from a population with heterogeneous intergenerational discount rates will be self-selected on intergenerational altruism, or patience. Selection on patience provides an alternative explanation for Chiswick's classic earnings-overtaking result. Other supporting evidence is: 1) Soviet Jews who migrate to Israel despite high migration costs are self-selected to have more children than members of the same birth cohort who migrate later when costs are low. We distinguish selection from treatment effects using a comparison group of women who migrate after childbearing age. 2) Immigrants favor bequests more and spend more time with their grandchildren in the U.S. Health and Retirement Survey. 3) Immigrant-absorbing countries like the U.S. have higher fertility than other countries at comparable income levels. Selection on patience implies that immigrant-absorbing regions will grow faster, or have higher per capita income, or both.