International immigration and female labour supply

Beschreibung

"One of the key questions on international migration concerns its benefits and costs for the receiving economies. Assessing the overall net gain or loss to the economy from immigration is a challenging task both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Immigration can affect the receiving economy through several channels: wages or employment effects on native workers, changes in output structure, fiscal effects, effects on house prices, and so on. In this chapter, we concentrate on one of the most important channel: the impact on wage and employment of natives. We consider the impact of immigration on a subgroup of the population that could particularly benefits from it, the female population. Since international migration may change the prevailing wage rates in the sectors where a large number of migrants looks for a job, we focus on immigrants working in the household service sector. The underlying idea is that migrants could increase the availability of services to households, like childcare, housekeeping, or caring for elderly, reducing their market prices. This effect could induce women to change their decision on participation to the labour market. In the empirical analysis, we use data of countries with quite different institutions (Australia, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US). This gives us the opportunity to understand whether the effect of migrants on female labour supply is relevant in countries where policies are more or less supportive to families." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Zitationshinweis

Forlani, Emanuele, Elisabetta Lodigiani & Concetta Mendolicchio (2016): International immigration and female labour supply. In: E. J. Stephens (Hrsg.) (2016): International migration : politics, policies and practices, S. 85-104.