Abstract
Exploiting a natural experiment, this paper uses the 1990 US Census data and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act amnesty to investigate the major mechanism through which intermarriage influences immigrant earnings. My strategy involves comparing international marriage premiums received by two groups of Mexican immigrants who arrived before and after the cutoff date of eligibility. Both groups face similar language and culture related obstacles and have to adapt themselves to the new environment, except that unauthorized Mexican workers who arrived before 1982 could obtain legal status through the amnesty while those who arrived after the cutoff date obtained legal status through marriage to a US citizen. Instrumental variables estimates show a significantly larger intermarriage premium for Mexican immigrants who migrated after the cutoff date and no statistically significant intermarriage premium is found in the pre-1982 group. The 35 % premium gap indicates a large effect of intermarriage on immigrant labor market outcomes, operating primarily through an improvement of legal status.
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Notes
The disability dummy equals one if the individual has a lasting physical or mental health condition that causes difficulty working.
This age range is chosen in order to capture prime age men for whom the labor market effects of intermarriage are most relevant.
The sample also excludes divorced and widowed men. Without information about previous wives, it is impossible to know whether the divorced or widowed man may have obtained legal status via the earlier marriage.
The results are similar if I include only immigrants 27 or younger at time of arrival, in order to exclude some of the immigrants who were likely already married upon arrival.
It should be noted that a change of employment status due to intermarriage might cause potential bias. Furtado and Theodoropoulos (2009) find that intermarriage increases an immigrant’s probability of being employed.
It is standard in the literature to use a binary variable to control for English ability. The 1990 Census collected information regarding each respondent’s highest degree or level of school completed instead of years of schooling.
Specifically, the reconstructed years since migration variable is equal to 1.5, 4.5, 7, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 35.5 and 46 corresponding to the following periods of entry: 1987–1990, 1985–1986, 1982–1984, 1980–1981, 1975–1979, 1970–1974, 1965–1969, 1960–1964, 1950–1959, 1949 or earlier.
Given the age difference, the post-82 group were likely in earlier stages of marriage, those intermarried in the pre-82 group might have longer time period to benefit from other channels through which intermarriage influences one’s labor market outcomes. We could consider the intermarriage premium difference between the two groups to be the lower bound of the legal benefit associated with intermarriage.
Results are very similar if I use fitted values from a multinomial probit rather than a logit as instruments.
For details of this approach, see Conley et al. (2012).
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Chi, M. Improved legal status as the major source of earnings premiums associated with intermarriage: evidence from the 1986 IRCA amnesty. Rev Econ Household 15, 691–706 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-015-9305-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-015-9305-x