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

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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, VOX, and Broadstreet.)

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This paper documents that disenfranchisement and discrimination discouraged WWII volunteer military participation of African American men, relative to Caucasian men, after the Pearl Harbor attack. The race-gap in volunteer enlistment is most pronounced in regions where discrimination was particularly severe. There is no gap in draft enlistment anywhere. Consistent with the notion that disenfranchisement and discrimination discourage military participation, we document that forcibly interred Japanese Americans were much less likely to serve in the U.S. military than those not interred.

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 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.

Keywords: political ideology; Immigration; History; Values and Beliefs; Welfare or Wellbeing; United States;

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. (Revised July 2020. Available also from VOX and in UCLA Anderson Review.) View Details

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US voters exaggerate the differences in attitudes held by Republicans and Democrats on a range of socioeconomic and political issues. We examine the drivers and implications of such perceived partisan differences. We find that a model of stereotypes where distortions are stronger for issues that are more salient to voters captures important features of the data. First, perceived partisan differences are predictable from the actual differences across parties, in particular the relative prevalence of extreme attitudes. Second, perceived partisan differences are larger on issues that individuals consider more important. In particular, we show that the end of the Cold War in 1991, which shifted US voters’ attention away from external threats, led to an increase in perceived partisan differences in domestic issues, 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. Finally, the belief distortions we identify are quantitatively significant, and strongly predict voting turnout.

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

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