The Impact of Social Security on Return Migration Among Latin American Elderly in the US

Abstract

International migration has long been considered the preserve of working-age adults. However, the rapid diversification of the elderly population calls for increased attention to the migration patterns of this group and its possible motivations. This study examines whether Latin American immigrants who are primary Social Security beneficiaries are more likely to return to their home countries during later life if they receive lower Social Security benefits. Using a regression discontinuity approach on restricted data from the U.S. Social Security Administration (N=1,515), this study presents the results of a natural experiment whereby the Social Security Administration unexpectedly lowered the Social Security benefits of the 1917-1921 birth cohorts due to a miscalculation in the benefit-calculation formula. Results suggest that approximately 10% of primary Social Security beneficiaries from Latin America born close to these dates return migrated, the probability of which was not affected by Social Security benefit levels.

The reasons older immigrants in the United States of America report for returning to Mexico

“…Despite the heavy focus on employment- and income-related migration in the return migration literature ( e.g. Durand et al 1996; Stark, Hemelstein and Yegorov 1997; Vega 2015), results show that relatively few former US immigrants returned to Mexico for these reasons. Employment and wages may be the primary reasons that immigrants move to the USA but family relationships may become more important after they reach their initial financial goals.…”

A multistate life table approach to understanding return and reentry migration between Mexico and the United States during later life

“…Several studies have suggested that social and familial ties may have an even greater influence than income in determining return migration (Massey 1987b; Vega 2015). For example, older Spanish and Italian immigrants in Switzerland listed the location of children as the most important factor in their retirement location decisions (Bolzman 2013).…”

“…Yet, older Mexicans have social and financial incentives for return migration, defined here as the act of returning to the country of origin, such as social support and land ownership (Massey 1987b), and reentry migration, which we define as the act of reentering the United States from Mexico, including proximity to children and grandchildren, and retirement benefits (Banks 2009). Despite these push and pull factors, research often treats international retirement migration as a singular occurrence and ignores the possibility of return to the home country and subsequent reentry back to the United States (e.g., Aguila and Zissimopoulos 2008; Casado-Díaz et al 2004; Sunil et al 2007; Vega 2015). By doing so, the current literature leaves unexamined the important implications that the timing and duration of migration spells have on micro- and macro-level outcomes.…”

“…The ideal data source contains all Mexican immigrants in Mexico who recently returned from the United States as well as all Mexican immigrants in the United States who recently arrived from Mexico. In the absence of this ideal, empirical research on this phenomenon has been mostly limited to documenting just one of these migration streams (e.g., Aguila and Zissimopoulos 2008; Van Hook and Zhang 2011; Vega 2015). The present study addresses this gap by combining nationally representative data sources from both Mexico and the United States to examine rates of return to Mexico and reentry to the United States in a multistate life table context.…”

Social Security Contributions and Return Migration Among Older Male Mexican Immigrants

“…Although there is a vibrant literature on the characteristics of entering migrants, there is far less information on migrants exiting the country. Studies document considerable migration among foreign-born primary social security beneficiaries (e.g., Turra & Elo, 2008;Vega, 2015) but do not examine emigration among immigrants who are ineligible to collect benefits. Duleep (1994) describes the state of the literature on how emigration affects the U.S. social security system as a "coarsely woven net of various strands of research, audacious assumptions, and rough approximations" (p. 31).…”