Have the poor always been less likely to migrate? Evidence from inheritance practices during the age of mass migration

Abstract

Using novel data on 50,000 Norwegian men, we study the effect of wealth on the probability of internal or international migration during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913), a time when the US maintained an open border to European immigrants. We do so by exploiting variation in parental wealth and in expected inheritance by birth order, gender composition of siblings, and region. We find that wealth discouraged migration in this era, suggesting that the poor could be more likely to move if migration restrictions were lifted today. We discuss the implications of these historical findings to developing countries.

Migrants and the Making of America: The Short- and Long-Run Effects of Immigration during the Age of Mass Migration

“…In fact, immigration immediately led to economic benefits that took the form of higher incomes, higher productivity, more innovation, and more industrialization. These findings complement recent scholarship examining the selection of immigrants to the United States (e.g., Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2012, 2013, Spitzer and Zimran, 2013 and their experiences after arrival (e.g., Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2014), as well as the existing literature on the importance of the cultural legacies of immigration (e.g., Fischer, 1989, Ottaviano and Peri, 2006, Ager and Bruckner, 2013, Grosjean, 2014, Bandiera, Mohnen, Rasul and Viarengo, 2016. Our findings of the long-term benefits of immigrants within the United States complement existing studies that also find long-term benefits of historical immigration in Brazil (Rocha, Ferraz and Soares, 2015) and Argentina (Droller, 2013).…”

Out-migration, wealth constraints, and the quality of local amenities

“…for Brazil; Chernina et al, 2013, for the late Russian Empire, and Andrienko andGuriev, 2004, Guriev andVakulenko, 2013, for post-Soviet Russia). On the other hand, a recent paper by Beegle et al (2011) finds no evidence that household wealth restricts migration in Tanzania, whereas Abramitzky et al (2012) find a negative relationship between wealth and the probability of both internal and international migration in the analysis of historical mass migration from Norway to the US.…”

“…Our paper also relates to the few papers that discuss the possibility that budget restrictions may constrain migration movement (McKenzie and Rapoport, 2007;Abramitzky et al, 2012;Sharma and Zaman, 2013). However, whereas these papers consider just one country and focus on international out-migrations, we illustrate the relation between wealth and migration plans regardless of destination for a large number of countries.…”

“…In addition, by emphasizing that the relation between wealth and migration plans depends on the overall wealth level of the country (i.e., the location of the wealth distribution) and may interact with other amenities, we offer a structure that can reconcile the differences in 7 findings between previous papers (e.g. McKenzie and Rapoport, 2007;Beegle et al, 2011;Abramitzky et al, 2012) with respect to the wealth-migration relation.…”

Does development reduce migration?

“…Taylor (1989, 1991) (2011) find a negative association between income and intra-US migration in a long panel, but credit constraints are less likely to bind within a rich country. In two studies using nineteenth-century micro data, Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (2013) find that household wealth has a negative linear association with emigration from Norway-interpreting this as evidence that credit and information constraints had been reduced by prior migration of many Norwegians; while Groote and Tassenaar (2000) find that the absence-of-hunger tended to encourage emigration from an impoverished portion of the rural Netherlands.…”