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Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts3. The Qualities of ImmigrantsPublished by the Cato Institute and the National Immigration Forum
Chapter 2 provided data on the numbers of immigrants. This
chapter gives data on their qualities--their age distribution,
educational levels, state of health, and related characteristics.
Age Distributions of Immigrants and Natives
The proportion of the immigrant group that is of labor-force
age (say 20-64, or better, 25-54) and of the male sex (males have
a greater propensity to work outside the home) matters greatly
with respect to the effect of immigrants on the nation's economic
output. Workers are economic producers for the rest of the
community, whereas youths and the elderly are not.
As in all countries in all eras, current migrants to the
United States tend to be young adults just beginning their work
lives.
The recent age distributions of the U.S. population and of
new immigrants are shown in Figure 3.1. The age distribution of
legal immigrants is very favorable for labor-force participation,
with a heavy concentration in the prime labor-force years.
Trends in the Educational "Quality" of Immigrants
This section first provides evidence on the trends in the
absolute educational levels of immigrants. It then provides
evidence on the trends in immigrants' education relative to
natives. The absolute data are the more meaningful measure
economically.*
Trends in the Absolute Amounts of Education of Immigrants
Table 3.1 shows the trends in amounts of education of
immigrants. The table includes several different kinds of data:
mean years of education, percentage of immigrants with 8 years of
education or less, and percentage with 16 years of education or
more. These measures will be discussed separately.
The Very Low and Very High Education Categories
During the 1980s, as well as for previous decades, immigrant
education increased rather than decreased. The proportion in the
low education category (line 3 in Table 3.1) declined, and the
proportion in the high education category (line 7 in Table 3.1)
increased. One cannot construct a unified index that contains all
the trend information in Table 3.1. But every single separate
comparison on every index shows that immigrant cohorts have been
better educated in each period than in each preceding period.
That is, across the decades the data show the following: (a) Mean
number of years of schooling has increased continuously. (b) The
proportion of new immigrants with eight years of education or
less has trended downward. (c) The proportion with a college
degree or even more education has gone up.
Differences among Legal Immigrants, Refugees, and Illegal Aliens
Fix and Passel (1994) have distinguished between persons
from "refugee" countries, "illegal immigration" countries, and
"legal immigration" countries. They show that the economic
characteristics of the groups are very different, the refugees
doing relatively poorly. (See Figures 3.7 and 3.8 below.) The
size of the refugee flow is not insignificant. "Between 1945 and
1990, one-quarter of all immigrants entering the United States
were admitted on humanitarian grounds" (Fix and Passel 1994, 15).
The information on differences in characteristics of legals,
refugees, and illegals is particularly pertinent to discussions
of legal immigration quotas, because only the data for persons
from "legal countries" bear upon that decision. Nevertheless,
given that refugees have frequently been an important part of the
immigrant stream, and may well be in the future, I recommend that
we also focus on the aggregate data.
The Amounts of Education of Immigrants Relative to Natives
The previous section showed data on the absolute educational
level of immigrants. It also may be of interest to compare the
educational level of immigrants with that of the native labor
force, even though these comparative levels are less informative
about economic decisions than are the absolute levels. However,
when we move from discussing absolute levels to discussing
relative levels of education, the matter becomes more complicated
technically.
Mean Years of Education
The only long time series available is average education.
Borjas calculated the mean years of education since 1940 for
natives and immigrant cohorts. This series shows a relative
decline for immigrants over the period from 1940 to 1980. Because
of a change in the way the questions were asked, it is not
possible to compute a similar measure for the 1990 census. This
series since 1940 should not be looked on as an overall measure
of a long-term trend, for two reasons:
1. For reasons of international conditions and the domestic
economy, immigration cohorts at the early end of the period
(1940) were very different in nature from the cohorts at the end
of the period. The latter period resembles present conditions and
conditions even earlier in U.S. history. In contrast, many of the
immigrants who entered between 1930 and 1950 were European war
refugees. They tended to be people who had enough wealth and
survival skills to be able to flee Europe. They also were people
who had enough education to lead them to believe that they would
be able to find a job and make a living in the rough U.S.
economic climate of the 1930s. Unskilled people abroad, on the
other hand, responded to the depression period by not migrating
to the United States; indeed, there was more U.S. emigration than
immigration in the 1930s for this reason. (In this respect,
immigration provided its usual salutary cyclical influence upon
the labor force--increasing it more when times are good than when
times are bad.)
Evidence that the data for refugees with high education for
1930 to 1950 are an aberration, as are the data for 1980 to 1981
for refugees with low education, may be found in even longer-run
data. For earlier decades, P. J. Hill (1975) calculated a measure
of the "labor force quality" of immigrants relative to that of
natives, roughly equivalent to a percentage. His estimates are:
1870, 0.97; 1880, 0.99; 1890, 0.95; 1900, 0.97; 1910, 0.95; 1920,
0.93. (Bernard Bailyn's research [1986] on the Colonial-period
Registry of Emigrants from Great Britain reveals much the same
pattern.) Hill's data are plotted together with Borjas's data in
Figure 3.2. We see there a long-run tendency for the mean labor
"quality" of new immigrants to be slightly below the mean of the
resident labor force, which makes the different sort of pattern
for the 1940 and 1950 censuses seem an unusual and temporary
happening rather than a reasonable benchmark with which the later
data should be compared.
2. The mean-education series embodies (and masks) the very
different tendencies at the two ends of the educational spectrum.
A bimodal distribution, where immigrants have a very wide range
of educational levels, complements natives at both ends of the
distribution. This has a very different economic meaning than
does a distribution of immigrants heaped in the middle at similar
education levels. (The observed bimodal pattern suggests that
immigrants fill empty niches rather than competing head-on with
natives.)
Proportions with Very Low and Very High Educations
Figures 3.3 and 3.4 graph the trends for high and low
education for immigrants and natives. The ratios of the
proportions for immigrants and natives in Table 3.2 help
elucidate the analysis.
At the bottom of the educational spectrum, there is a
disproportionately large number of immigrants. And though the
proportion of immigrants with eight years or less of education
has fallen over the decades, the proportion relative to natives
has risen.
At the top of the educational spectrum, there also are
disproportionate numbers of immigrants. All the data show that
immigrants enhance the workforce and economy with ever-growing
proportions of the highest skilled labor.
Rumbaut's compilation (1994) of the proportions of
immigrants whose occupation is given as "professional, executive,
or manager" from the years 1967 to 1992 runs somewhat contrary to
the trends in the education data presented above. The worldwide
percentages are: 1967, 32.4; 1977, 36.0; 1977, 33.0; 1982, 31.9;
1987, 26.5; 1992, 24.0. The trend over the decades in these data
is hard to square with the educational data presented earlier.
(Rumbaut observes that the sharp drop in 1992 is in good part due
to Latin American IRCA legalizations, especially of persons from
Mexico.)
Rumbaut also points out the huge range among countries in
1992 in the "professional, executive, or manager" category--from
63.1 percent from India to 1.7 percent from Mexico. Figure 3.5
shows the data on distribution of occupations among new
immigrants and natives in 1985 to 1987. It also shows the
differences between skill-tested and other immigrants.
Particular Highly Skilled Occupations
The number of foreign engineers and scientists granted
permanent residency in the United States "rose dramatically--to
more than 22,800--in 1992, compared with 14,100 in 1991. . . .
The annual figure hovered near 11,000 during the 1980s" (Science,
July 22, 1994, 477).
In just the 10 years from 1975 to 1985, the proportions of
engineering faculty and of assistant professors in engineering,
aged 35 or less, both rose from about 10 percent to about 50
percent of the total professors in those categories (National
Research Council 1988, 68).
These talented scientists and engineers are arguably the
most important intellectual assets that any country could have.
Special Occupational Needs of the Society
Evidence on the distribution of occupations with respect to
the needs of the U.S. economy is shown by the comparative data on
the immigration of 4,152 doctors and 954 lawyers and judges in
1993 (INS, Statistical Yearbook, 1993, Table 20, p. 67). As of
1994, 20.5 percent of all physicians in the United States were
born abroad, whereas 3.5 percent of all lawyers and judges were
born abroad. It may be taken as simple fact that this shows that
people select themselves to immigrate in accord with the needs of
the society and their capacity to integrate with that society
economically.
Engineers (12.3 percent), postsecondary teachers (15.1
percent), math/computer scientists (10 percent), and natural
scientists (12.6 percent) also are overrepresented
proportionally, relative to the native occupational mix. These
data also throw light on the propensity of immigrants to serve
the economic needs of the society at the time when they immigrate
(Washington Post, April 18, 1994, A6).
Students from Abroad
The absolute and relative numbers of foreign students in the
United States have been rising--from 154,580 and 1.5 percent of
all college students in school year 1974-1975 to 438,620 and 3.0
percent of all college students in school year 1992-1993
(Washington Post, October 29, 1994, A7).
There has been a rapid increase in the proportions of
foreign science and engineering graduate students in U.S.
universities. Many of them manage to remain after they finish
their studies, and many more would remain if it were legally
possible to do so.
The number of foreign engineering students at all levels
rose from under 10,000 in 1955 to more than 75,000 in the 1980s
(National Research Council 1988, 92).
The ratio of foreign (persons with temporary visas)
engineering doctorates in engineering to U.S. citizens rose from
about 1:6 in 1970 to more than 1:1 in 1985 (National Research
Council 1988, 12). The number of doctorates in physics earned
yearly by foreign citizens is now about 600 (up from 200 a decade
ago), compared to 800 earned by U.S. citizens and foreigners
holding permanent visas (Science, October 1, 1993, 25). "In 1990,
62% of engineering doctorates in the U.S. were given to
foreign-born students, mainly Asian. The figures are almost as
high in mathematics, computer science and the physical sciences"
(Bhagwati and Rao 1994).
Figures 3.6 and 3.7 show how the proportions of science and
engineering doctorates granted to nonnatives has risen. These
students represent a pool of potential well-educated immigrants
as well as contributors to research and teaching while they are
in the United States.
Other Measures of Immigrant "Quality," Absolute and Relative
The earnings of immigrants relative to those of natives
during various periods of time following immigration is the
subject of a huge and controversial literature. I will present
recent findings without analyzing their provenance and validity.
The earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men since
the 1960s seem to have become lower relative to native men than
they had been, both at time of arrival and in later decades (see
Table 3.3), though the earnings of immigrants may still come to
equal or surpass those of natives and may be rising faster from
the base levels than in past years. (The latter matter is in hot
dispute, however; see Borjas 1994, Chiswick 1986, Duleep and
Regets 1992.)
The gap between the mean earnings of all new immigrant men
and adult native men 25-64 was wider in the 1980s than in the
previous decade--27 percent versus 22 percent (see Table 3.3;
Borjas 1994, 1678). This continues a trend from men who entered
in the 1960s (a gap of 10.5 percent). The gap between the mean
earnings of immigrant men who entered in the 1970s and adult
natives 25-64 also was wider in the 1980s than the comparable gap
in the previous decade.
These data lend themselves to a variety of interpretations.
They probably reflect some changes in educational mix, but also
changes in wage structure in the economy and other environmental
factors. Even taken at face value, they do not imply that the
newer immigrants are a negative force; the worst that can be said
of this trend is that it brings persons who contribute a lower
amount of "excess" taxes to the public treasury than do persons
of higher education. (A fuller explanation follows in Chapter 5.)
If persons of lower education immigrate (those who earn lower
wages, especially those who come illegally), they come because
there is a demand for their services in the labor market.
Supplying that demand cannot be a bad thing economically (subject
to influences on the employment and wages of natives, as
discussed below and in Chapter 4).
The Health of Immigrants
Throughout this compilation I mostly refrain from analysis
or comment. But this section is so amazing that I must remark on
it.
Immigrants tend to come from countries poorer than the
United States. The poorer the country, the poorer the health of
the citizens, on average. Therefore, one might expect the health
of immigrants to be poorer than that of U.S. citizens. Yet here
is an authoritative "official" review of general health data for
immigrants and natives.
Overall, foreign-born persons had better health than the
U.S.-born population, although this health advantage varied by
length of residence in the United States. In virtually every
measure of health status, and with regard to almost every
sociodemographic characteristic, the most recent immigrants were
healthier than foreign-born persons who have lived in the United
States 10 years or more as well as healthier than the U.S.-born
population. Immigrants who had lived in the United States 10
years or longer were generally healthier than U.S.-born adults,
although the differences were not as striking as between recent
immigrants and the native-born population. (Stephen et al. 1994,
4)
And here is a summary of the perinatal health of immigrants
as compared to natives.
[I]n a recent review of the literature, Eberstein (1991) cites
research indicating that among Blacks and Hispanics, pregnancy
outcomes (birthweight, mortality) are better among babies born to
immigrants than to U.S.-born mothers. Williams et al. (1986)
reported similar results for Spanish-surname women in California.
Guendelman et al. (1990), using data from the Hispanic-HANES,
found that low-birthweight (LBW) rates were significantly higher
for second-generation U.S.-born women of Mexican descent compared
with (less acculturated) first-generation Mexico-born women,
despite the fact that the latter had a lower socioeconomic
status, a higher percentage of mothers over 35 years of age, and
less adequate prenatal care. The risk of LBW was about four times
higher for second than first generation primiparous women, and
double for second than first generation multiparous women.
Earlier, Elena Yu (1982) had reported that Chinese-Americans had
lower fetal, neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates than
whites and other major ethnic/racial groups, and the superior
health profile of Chinese infants was observed at every level of
maternal education and for all maternal ages. (Rumbaut 1992, 3-4)
Better health of a given group (the immigrants, in this
case) implies economic benefits for the community as a
whole--less public expenditures on health and more work.
Differences among Immigrant Groups
By analyzing data on immigrants from various countries, Fix
and Passel (1994) have shown that there are great differences in
the mean characteristics of the various types of flows of
immigrants that they distinguish: legal immigrants, refugees, the
undocumented. Figure 3.8 shows the variation in education.
When immigrants are subclassified by legal category of
entrance, the earnings picture also is quite different than for
immigrants taken altogether. In an analysis of the 1990 census
data in which the average household income (quite different from
the individual earnings concept referred to earlier) of natives
was $37,300, 1980-1990 immigrants from countries where most of
the immigration is legal received $34,800 (that is, 93 percent of
average native family income), those from countries sending
mostly refugees to the United States received $27,700, and income
of those from countries sending illegals was $23,900 (see Figure
3.9). No information is now available on whether the picture was
similar or different in earlier decades.
*This section is based upon a paper written jointly with Ather Akbari (1995). More details on the data are reported there. |
