Population Aging and Individual Attitudes toward Immigration: Disentangling Age, Cohort and Time Effects

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. AbstractIn the face of rising old-age dependency ratios in industrialized countries like Germany, politicians and their electorates discuss the loosening of immigration policies as one policy option to ensure the sustainability of public social security systems. The question arises whether this policy option is feasible in aging countries: older individuals are typically found to be more averse to immigration. However, crosssectional investigations may confound age with cohort effects. This investigation uses the 1999-2008 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to separate the effect of age on immigration attitudes from cohort and also from time effects. Over the life cycle stated immigration concerns are predicted to increase well into retirement and decrease afterward. Relative to other issues, immigration concerns are found to actually decrease over the life cycle.JEL classification: D78, F22, J10

The Role of Social Capital in Shaping Europeans’ Immigration Sentiments

“…The share of elderly people in a country tests whether sentiments toward immigration differ across countries with different age distributions. Empirical evidence (Calahorrano, 2013) supports that over the life cycle, the stated immigration concerns are predicted to increase well into retirement and decrease afterward.…”

Why Are the Elderly More Averse to Immigration When They Are More Likely to Benefit? Evidence across Countries

“…However, even though young workers would be negatively affected by a decrease in wages, they would benefit from a declining social security contribution rate today and from immigrant's descendants contributing to their pension benefits in the future (Sand and Razin, 2007). Thereby, the old's and young's preferences are closer together under this scenario than in one without a PAYG system (Calahorrano, 2013). In a PAYG system where pension levels follow a wage growth index, older individuals will vote for a more restrictive immigration regime if they perceive that immigration will decrease wages (Haupt and Peters, 1998;Scholten and Thum, 1996).…”

Migration and the Demographic Shift

“…For example, individuals may care about the future political balance and behave strategically when choosing current immigration levels (Razin and Sand, 2007), or about the design of pension systems with natives benefiting from sharing pension contributions with immigrants in the presence of fixed pension benefits (Calahorrano, 2010). Empirical studies on the determinants of attitudes towards immigration often find a negative or hump-shaped relationship with age (see a review of studies in Calahorrano, 2013;and, for example, Dustmann and Preston, 2007;Mayda, 2009, 2012;Bauer et al, 2000 find a positive correlation for both favorable and unfavorable attitudes). This suggests that even if increased immigration could partially relieve the negative impacts of aging, liberalizing immigration might be further complicated by the aging process per se, since the older electorate may be less in favor of it.…”

“…Using panel data for Germany over 1999-2010 to investigate the effect of age on individual preferences towards immigration, Calahorrano (2013) argues that these cross-sectional studies are likely to confound age effects with cohort effects. The negative correlation with age may reflect 34 either growing aversion to immigration over one's lifecycle or the fact that older cohorts of individuals are less in favor of immigration while having nothing to do with the individual life cycle effect.…”