The fiscal impact of immigration to welfare states of the Scandinavian type

Hansen, Marianne Frank; Schultz-Nielsen, Marie Louise; Tranæs, Torben

doi:10.1007/s00148-017-0636-1

Cited by 30 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Hansen et al. (: 949) estimated the negative fiscal impact of the entire non‐Western population group (immigrants plus descendants – mostly second generation) residing in Denmark to be around 1 per cent of GDP in 2014. According to the projections, the NPV of lifetime contributions for the 2013 cohort is only positive in the case of Western immigrants and their descendants, all other groups including natives make a negative net contribution.…”

Section: Refugee Migration Is Very Unlikely To Results In a Positive Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Often this distinction is practically made between EU and non‐EU migrants – the main reason behind is the nature of available statistical data. These estimates resulted in uniform findings: the net fiscal contribution of non‐Western immigrants is usually negative and is much worse than the contribution of the Western migrants (Wadensjö, ; Gerdes, ; Dustmann and Frattini, ; Hansen et al., ).…”

Section: Fiscal Balance Estimates – Measurements and Determinantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, they require many assumptions about the future. The projections of demographic development, social and labour market indicators and the state of the economy are required (see for example Hansen et al., : 930–931). It's difficult to decide when (in which future year) to stop counting the fiscal impact but by each additional year the assumptions become more and more speculative.…”

Section: Fiscal Balance Estimates – Measurements and Determinantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiscal Consequences of the Refugee Crisis

Gál

2018

International Migration

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The European Union faced an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers during the 2014–2016 refugee and migration crisis. The admitted refugees pose a critical challenge, but at the same time represent an opportunity for the host countries’ public finances. If the fiscal balance of immigration is positive, then migrants become net contributors to public budgets, helping to alleviate the aging related fiscal burden. However, we argue that this is highly unlikely to happen with refugees entering extensive European welfare states, at least in the short and medium term. By reviewing the existing empirical literature, we demonstrate that the research on the fiscal effects of refugee (or non‐Western) immigration almost uniformly supports the conclusion that the fiscal balance is going to be negative. The noble aims of humanitarian obligation to accept refugees seem to be in conflict with the pragmatic economic interest – a fiscally beneficial immigration – this time.

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Section: Refugee Migration Is Very Unlikely To Results In a Positive Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fiscal Balance Estimates – Measurements and Determinantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fiscal Balance Estimates – Measurements and Determinantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiscal Consequences of the Refugee Crisis

Gál

2018

International Migration

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“…Unsurprisingly, studies showed that this increased poverty rates among newcomers, although it also was associated with slightly higher employment rates, as intended (Andersen et al, 2012).…”

Section: Sweden: the Challenge Of Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 90%

Family-oriented policies in Scandinavia and the challenge of immigration

Grødem

2016

Journal of European Social Policy

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The social political debate on immigration as a challenge to the welfare states has been remarkably silent on gender and family issues. This article argues that immigrants’ use of welfare benefits targeted at families may be particularly problematic, because such benefits embody certain normative tensions that other social policies do not. It is suggested that tensions may be particularly high in Scandinavia, given the Scandinavian countries’ long-term commitment to facilitating employment for women. What happens when immigrants in the Scandinavian countries use policies targeted at families to maintain gender-complimentary family practices and home-based motherhood? Will such practices be met by reforms that streamline benefits around the principle of universal employment? The article highlights policy arrangements that have been described as detrimental to immigrant women’s employment in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and reviews whether they have been reformed in recent years and, where relevant, what arguments have been used to motivate reforms. The analysis shows that many of the relevant benefits recently have been reformed to become less accommodating of home-based care work. However, politics clearly matter, and it is not given that immigrants’ use of benefits will always be a trump card. Also, dynamics vary according to how controversial the welfare arrangement in question was before it was highlighted as an immigrant issue. A third finding is that even when benefit arrangements that have been highlighted as particularly detrimental to immigrant women’s employment are targeted, politicians often downplay the integration issue when arguing for reform.

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“…The majority of studies in the literature deals with this problem by simply estimating the fiscal net contribution, and trusting this to be at least a fair proxy for the effect of interest (see reviews by Rowthorn 2008;Preston 2014). A minority take the alternative approach of attempting to explicitly model the most important dynamic mechanisms that create the difference between the net contribution and the effect (e.g., Storesletten 2000; Miller 1998, 2000;Hansen et al 2017). The obvious weakness of this strategy is that there are many candidate mechanisms, and the exact form is not well known for any of them.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The fiscal aspect of the refugee crisis

Ruist

2019

Int Tax Public Finance

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An important part of the resistance to higher refugee immigration in rich countries is due to the fear of the negative fiscal consequences. Yet this article shows that the fiscal consequences even of substantially increased refugee immigration are likely to be quite modest. According to the estimates, if the European Union received all refugees currently in Asia and Africa, the implied average annual fiscal cost over the lifetime of these refugees would be at most 0.6% of the union's GDP. If other rich countries also shared the burden, the cost per country would be even lower. Keywords Refugees • Immigration • Public finances JEL Classification F22 • H20 • H50 • J61 1 These concerns are consistently referred to in public discussions in different countries, and are the rhetorical focus of political parties that strongly oppose refugee immigration. Much research (e.g. Dustmann and Preston 2007; Card et al. 2012) has shown that similar concerns are important in explaining resistance to immigration in general. These studies also highlight the role of concerns about increased competition on the labor market. Yet this factor is seldom mentioned in public discussions about current European refugee immigration, which is logical when it appears to take the median refugee more than ten years to find employment (Fasani et al. 2018).

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The fiscal impact of immigration to welfare states of the Scandinavian type

Cited by 30 publications

References 6 publications

Fiscal Consequences of the Refugee Crisis

Fiscal Consequences of the Refugee Crisis

Family-oriented policies in Scandinavia and the challenge of immigration

The fiscal aspect of the refugee crisis

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