Suchergebnisse

Given that refugees may be fleeing from political, social, racial, ethnic, or religious persecution, they are not expected to be economically independent upon arrival to the United States. Considerable state and federal resources are specifically aimed at the economic assimilation of refugees in the United States. In this article, I examine the extent to which average refugee wages have assimilated toward those of their native counterparts in the United States. Among synthetic cohorts from 1990 to 2000, most recent young refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 17 percent within a decade. Similarly, in the period between 2000 and 2010, the gains for young and recent refugees increase average refugee wages by approximately 22 percent. In contrast, across both decades, duration effects for the oldest refugee cohorts — irrespective of their length of stay in the United States — exert a considerable downward push on average refugee wages. The contrasts in wage contributions for the oldest and youngest cohorts are less extreme for non-refugee immigrants. These findings underscore the importance of age at entry into the United States for wage assimilation, especially in the case of refugees.

Abstract
A heightened interest in understanding the remitting practices of immigrants and their impact on a variety of economic indicators has emerged as remittances to developing countries have risen substantially over the past decade. If remittances primarily enhance consumption, they may have no lasting impact on economic growth. However, through asset accumulation and human capital investment, remittances may serve as a vehicle for growth. In this paper, we use the 2010 Nepal Living Standards Survey III (NLSS III) to examine how remittances affect household expenditures on human capital investment. Overall, our findings suggest that at the margin, remittances do contribute to human capital investment, but this effect varies substantially by school quality within Nepal. In addition, our results indicate that internal remittances (remittances from household members migrating internally) have a greater impact on education than do external remittances. We posit that this may be due to a higher value placed on Nepali education by internal migrants as compared to the education needed for foreign job opportunities by migrants abroad.

JEL codes: J61, I25, F22, F24, H52, O15