Urban Immigrant Diversity and Inclusive Institutions
Citation: Tom Kemeny, Abigail Cooke (2017/03/30) Urban Immigrant Diversity and Inclusive Institutions. Economic Geography (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1080/00130095.2017.1300056
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1080/00130095.2017.1300056
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1080/00130095.2017.1300056
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Urban Immigrant Diversity and Inclusive Institutions
Download: https://www.buffalo.edu/content/dam/www/news/documents/Study%20PDFs/Urban%20Immigrant%20Diversity%20and%20Inclusive%20Institutions.pdf
Tagged: immigration (RSS)
Summary
Tests the hypothesis that the rewards from immigrant diversity will be higher in metropolitan areas that feature more inclusive social and economic institutions using longitudinal employer-employee data (also used in Spillovers from immigrant diversity in cities by the same authors) triangulated across two measures of local inclusive institutions, testing a model where diversity implies latent economic advantages and disadvantages whose realization depends on the cost of interaction.
The first measure of inclusive institutions is a composite measure of social capital, including associations and "third places" (both from County Business Patterns), American Community Survey response rates, and voter turnout.
The second is a variable that captures locality-specific ordinances aimed at immigrants including anti- (e.g., "punish employers who hire undocumented immigrants, ones that amend housing codes to restrict crowding, some that restrict the use of languages other than English, and still others that require immigration checks in response to events ranging from arrests to new firm births") and pro- (e.g., sanctuary laws that prohibit immigration checks or regulations that extend voting rights for immigrants in local elections).
(H1) The effects of immigrant diversity on worker productivity should be stronger in metropolitan locations that feature more inclusive institutions.
City-level diversity is positive and significantly related to the wages of workers, the strength of the association varies considerably: the coefficient on metropolitan immigrant diversity for workers in cities in the highest tercile of social capital is seven times as high as for workers in the lowest. For metros with over half of the population is covered by anti-immigrant ordinances, diversity is insignificantly associated with higher wages. For metros with over half of the population covered by pro-immigrant ordinances, diversity is significantly associated with higher wages, and the effect is large.
(H2) The moderating role for institutions specified in H1 will be more important for native-born workers than for immigrants.
Foreign-born wages increase with diversity (significant effect) in both inclusive and non-inclusive locales, with a larger effect in inclusive locales. Native-born wages have no significant effect in non-inclusive locals, but respond significantly to increased diversity, with an even larger positive effect than do foreign-born wages.
