Emigrant selection and wages: The case of Poland

Abstract

In this paper, I use a unique individual-level pre-migration labour market dataset for Poland to examine emigrant selection in two major destination countries, the United Kingdom and Germany. I compare the pre-migration observable and unobservable characteristics of emigrants with those of non-emigrants in Poland. First, I find that Polish emigrants to the UK are more similarly educated to non-emigrants while being more negatively selected on residual wages. Second, emigrants to Germany are disproportionately more likely to fall in the middle of the education distribution but they are no different than non-emigrants in terms of unobservable skills. The familiar predictions of the Borjas (1987) model allow me to partially undercover the mechanism driving the selection patterns of Polish emigrants. I contribute to the migrant selection literature by providing additional evidence on how migrants respond to differences in both labour markets and migration policies across countries.

Movers and Stayers: A Study of Emigration from Sweden 1993–2014

“…This enabled us to show that a large share of the selectivity occurs even before individuals are fully able to display their labour market abilities, suggesting that previous studies have underestimated emigrants’ selectivity levels across developed countries. Second, we established clear differences in the selectivity pattern across destination regions, in line with recent studies that have reached similar conclusions (Borjas et al, 2019 ; Parey et al, 2017 ; Rosso, 2019 ). Finally, our empirical findings regarding the gender-based differences in selectivity levels call for a more in-depth examination of the impacts of gender and family status on emigrants’ selectivity levels.…”

“…However, other studies have found intermediate selection, showing that emigrants are drawn from the middle of the wage distribution, as in the case of emigrants from Mexico and Israel to the US (Chiquiar & Hanson, 2005 ; Gould & Moav, 2016 ), while others found negative patterns of self-selection among emigrants (Moraga, 2011 ). Such mixed results confirm the model’s expectation that self-selection patterns are sensitive to the specific source and destination countries under observation (Dustmann & Görlach, 2015 ; Parey et al, 2017 ; Rosso, 2019 ). 4 However, even when using the same source and destination countries, as in the case of Mexican emigrants to the US, findings are inconsistent for patterns of self-selection (Chiquiar & Hanson, 2005 ; Kaestner & Malamud, 2014 ; Moraga, 2011 ).…”

“…To extend our understanding of the patterns of self-selection in terms of unobserved characteristics, we also used a skills index not directly derived from labour market outcomes namely, school grades while attending compulsory education. Most of the emigration studies restricted their samples of potential emigrants to individuals in their prime working ages who are strongly attached to the labour market (Borjas et al, 2019 ; Gould & Moav, 2016 ; Rosso, 2019 ). In contrast, the current study examined individuals at the ages of 18–39, which enabled us to shed light on selectivity patterns among young emigrants who have not yet positioned themselves in the labour market.…”

“…The economic model of migration also asserts that within the population of emigrants, the most intensive positive self-selection patterns (“sorting”) are found among the most highly skilled individuals, who choose to move to highly developed countries with free markets and with restrictive welfare policies (Grogger & Hanson, 2011 ). Due to data limitations, most previous studies on selectivity have analysed immigrants’ characteristics at destinations, 1 and only recently have scattered studies explored the selectivity patterns of emigrants at their source countries (Borjas et al, 2019 ; Gould & Moav, 2016 ; Rosso, 2019 ). However, only a few of those studies have considered the entire native population-at-risk and followed individuals over a relatively long period of time (for an exception, see Borjas et al, 2019 ).…”

The economics of migration: Labour market impacts and migration policies

“…As far as migrant selection is concerned, migrants tend to move to countries where their skills are relatively scarce, filling in gaps in the natives' set of skills (Aparicio-Fenoll and Kuehn, 2019). Migrants' selection on observable and on unobservable characteristics, however, do not necessarily move in the same direction and are responsive to migration regimes in destination countries (Rosso, 2019). Policies that select migrants based on education level (pointbased systems) do not necessarily attract the immigrants with the most sought-after skills and those that will be the most highly rewarded in the host country labour market (Bertoli and Stillman, 2020).…”