The Impact of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Income Distribution
| Autor: | Po-Chen Fan, 范博禎 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2012 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 100 The United States is well known to be a country of immigrants. It has experienced numerous waves of immigration over the past 150 years. However, in recent times, the number of illegal immigrants in the US has risen substantially. Large numbers of illegal immigrants can now be found in nearly every one of the US fifty states. The existence and scale of the illegal immigration has generated considerable public pressure for analysis and change. This thesis considers one important aspect which is often discussed in the literature on illegal immigration; namely, the issue of whether or not illegal immigration has had a substantial impact on the distribution of income in the United States. The thesis first discusses, in a simple and direct fashion, the original theoretical foundation provided by W. Ethier on the subject of illegal immigration and wages. It then turns to a panel data set on high versus low incomes ranging over the individual fifty US states for selected years. Additional data on unemployment and regional dummy variables are included, as well. It is found that after controlling for business cycle influences, illegal immigration is directly and significantly correlated with the spread between high and low incomes among the fifty US states. However, while the effect is statistically significant, the magnitude of this effect is still not particularly large. A 10% rise in illegal immigration spread evenly over the states can be expected to increase the spread between high and low incomes by only 1-2%. A number of regional discrepancies for this effect, as well as their possible political differences are explored in the thesis. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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