Safety at work and immigration

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of immigration on workplace safety, an understudied outcome in the literature. We use a novel administrative dataset of the universe of workplace accidents reported in Spain from 2003 to 2015 and follow an instrumental variables (IV) strategy based on the distribution of early migrants across provinces. Our results show that the massive inflow of immigrants between 2003 and 2009 reduced the number of workplace accidents by 10,980 for native workers (7% of the overall reduction during that period). This decline in workplace accidents is driven by Spanish-born workers shifting away from manual occupations to occupations involving more interpersonal interactions. Immigrant flows during the economic crisis (2010–2015) had no impact on natives’ workplace safety. The scarcity of jobs during that period may have prevented shifts between occupations. Finally, we find no effects of immigration on the workplace safety of immigrants. These results add a previously unexplored dimension to the immigration debate that should be taken into account when evaluating the costs and benefits of migration flows.

Immigration, amnesties, and the shadow economy

“…Taking into consideration this potential endogeneity problem, we also estimate the relationship between immigration and the shadow economy by adopting a two‐stage least square (2SLS) approach, which requires an instrument for the immigration variable. The choice of this instrument is based on a specific strategy that has been widely used in the literature (see Basso et al., 2019; Bellés‐Obrero et al., 2021; Bianchi et al., 2012; Card, 2001, 2005; D'Amuri & Peri, 2014; Edo et al., 2019; Lonsky, 2021; Rozo & Sviatschi, 2021). We use an instrument à la Bartik (1991) to control for the “assortative matching” of immigrants into localities with larger availability of irregular jobs.…”

The Impact of Immigrants on Host Country Wages, Employment and Growth

“…Almost 40 percent of recent immigrants are from Asia (especially Southeast Asia), and a roughly equal number originate in Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America. 1 Most immigrants, therefore, come from countries that are poorer and less educated than the United States. Table 2 also shows the share of 1980s immigrants from each region who have less than a high school education.…”

Immigration, Working Conditions, and Compensating Differentials

“…Alacevich and Nicodemo (2019) find that immigration led to reductions in natives' injury rates in Italy and report suggestive, although not statistically significant, evidence that changes in the physical intensity of natives' occupations underlies the observed effect. Bellés-Obrero, Bassols, and Castello (2020) find that increased immigration caused the number of workplace accidents among natives to fall in Spain as natives shifted to communications-intensive occupations from manual occupations. Giuntella and Mazzonna (2015) find that immigration improved natives' health outcomes in Germany as a result of improvements in natives' working conditions.…”

“… 2 Several studies examine questions related to whether immigration affected European natives’ exposure to occupational risks. Alacevich and Nicodemo (2019) examined Italy; Bellés-Obrero, Bassols, and Castello (2021) examined Spain; Giuntella and Mazzonna (2015) examined Germany; and Giuntella, Mazzonna, Nicodemo, and Vargas-Silva (2019) examined the United Kingdom. All of these studies found results consistent with natives moving into safer jobs. …”