Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

Marco  Tabellini

Article | Review of Economic Studies | January 2020

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

In this paper, I jointly investigate the political and the economic effects of immigration and study the causes of anti-immigrant sentiments. I exploit exogenous variation in European immigration to U.S. cities between 1910 and 1930 induced by World War I and the Immigration Acts of the 1920s as well as instrument immigrants’ location decision relying on pre-existing settlement patterns. I find that immigration triggered hostile political reactions, such as the election of more conservative legislators, higher support for anti-immigration legislation, and lower redistribution. Exploring the causes of natives’ backlash, I document that immigration increased natives’ employment, spurred industrial production, and did not generate losses even among natives working in highly exposed sectors. These findings suggest that opposition to immigration was unlikely to have economic roots. Instead, I provide evidence that natives’ political discontent was increasing in the cultural differences between immigrants and natives. Results in this paper indicate that, even when diversity is economically beneficial, it may nonetheless be socially hard to manage.

Keywords: Political backlash; Age of Mass Migration; cultural diversity; Immigration; History; Economy; Attitudes; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Diversity;

Format: Print

118 pages

Find at Harvard Read Now

Citation:

Tabellini, Marco. "Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration." Review of Economic Studies 87, no. 1 (January 2020): 454–486. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-005, July 2018. Available also from Cato Institute, Microeconomic Insights, and VOX.)

Supplemental Information

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States

Paola Giuliano and Marco Tabellini

We test the relationship between historical immigration to the United States and political ideology today. We hypothesize that European immigrants brought with them their preferences for the welfare state, and that this had a long-lasting effect on the political ideology of US born individuals. Our analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we document that the historical presence of European immigrants is associated with a more liberal political ideology and with stronger preferences for redistribution among US born individuals today. Next, we show that this correlation is not driven by the characteristics of the counties where immigrants settled or other specific, socioeconomic immigrants' traits. Finally, we conjecture and provide evidence that immigrants brought with them their preferences for the welfare state from their countries of origin. Consistent with the hypothesis that immigration left its footprint on American ideology via cultural transmission from immigrants to natives, we show that our results are stronger when inter-group contact between natives and immigrants, measured with either intermarriage or residential integration, was higher. Our findings also indicate that immigrants influenced American political ideology during one of the largest episodes of redistribution in US history — the New Deal — and that such effects persisted after the initial shock.

Citation:

Giuliano, Paola, and Marco Tabellini. "The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-118, May 2020. View Details

Cite View Details SSRN Read Now

We examine U.S. voters’ beliefs about views held by Republicans and Democrats. While individuals exaggerate partisan differences on a range of socioeconomic and political issues, we document that belief distortions are larger on issues that individuals consider more important. We organize these facts using a model of stereotypes where distortions are stronger for issues that are more salient to voters. In line with the model, belief distortions are predictable from the differences across parties, in particular the relative prevalence of extreme attitudes. To assess the impact of issue salience, we show that the end of the Cold War in 1991, which shifted U.S. voters’ attention away from external threats and towards domestic issues, led to an increase in perceived polarization in the latter and more so for issues with more stereotypical partisan differences. The reverse pattern occurred after the terrorist attacks in 2001, when attention swung back towards external threats. The distortions we identify are quantitatively significant and could have important consequences for political engagement as such distortions strongly predict voting turnout.

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new out-group change the in-group’s perceptions of other out-groups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of other minorities when the former is perceived as more distant than the latter. We test this framework by studying how Mexican immigration to the U.S. affected whites’ attitudes and behaviors towards African Americans. We combine survey and crime data with a difference-in-differences design and an instrumental variables strategy. Consistent with the theory, Mexican immigration improves whites’ attitudes towards blacks, increases support for pro-black government policies, and lowers anti-black hate crimes, while simultaneously increasing prejudice against Hispanics. Immigration of groups perceived as less distant than blacks does not have similar effects. Our findings imply that changes in the size of one group can affect the entire web of inter-group relations in diverse societies.

Faculty & Research

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

Citation:

Supplemental Information

About the Author

More from the Author