International Migration and the Welfare State Revisited

Immigration is a controversial topic in most developed economies. The presence of are distributive welfare state in all major immigrant host countries creates a margin on which immigration affects native welfare. The primary focus of the paper is whether a large intake of immigrants reduces welfare...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gaston, Noel, Rajaguru, Gulasekaran
Format: Journal Article
Published: Elsevier BV * North-Holland 2013
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/11264
Description
Summary:Immigration is a controversial topic in most developed economies. The presence of are distributive welfare state in all major immigrant host countries creates a margin on which immigration affects native welfare. The primary focus of the paper is whether a large intake of immigrants reduces welfare state effort. It is usually argued that steady increases in immigration lead to public pressure for lower levels of publicly-funded social expenditures. In contrastz to the earlier empirical literature on this topic, we find little evidence in favour of this hypothesis. While immigration does have a relatively modest effect on the welfare state, if anything there is some support for the view that a greater influx of immigrants has lead policy-makers to increase welfare state spending.