Two Decades of Negative Educational Selectivity of Mexican Migrants to the United States

Abstract

Immigration is commonly considered to be selective of more able individuals. Studies comparing the educational attainment of Mexican immigrants in the United States to that of the Mexican resident population support this characterization. Upward educational-attainment biases in both coverage and measurement, however, may be substantial in U.S. data sources. Moreover, differences in educational attainment by place size are very large within Mexico, and U.S. data sources provide no information on immigrants’ places of origin within Mexico. To address these problems, we use multiple sources of nationally-representative Mexican survey data to re-evaluate the educational selectivity of working-age Mexican migrants to the United States over the 1990s and 2000s. We document disproportionately rural and small-urban-area origins of Mexican migrants and a steep positive gradient of educational attainment by place size. We show that together these conditions induced strongly negative educational selection of Mexican migrants throughout the 1990s and 2000s. We interpret this finding as consistent with low returns to the education of unauthorized migrants and few opportunities for authorized migration.

Gendered disparities in Mexico-U.S. migration by class, ethnicity, and geography

“…This heterogeneity may be structured by gender, meaning that gender may interact with other forms of social status to pattern men's and women's relative risk of migration in systematic ways. For example, female migrants are more positively selected for education than are male migrants (Feliciano 2008;Kanaiaupuni 2000;Rendall and Parker 2013). As a result, the gender disparity in migration is largest among the least educated and smallest among those with the most education.…”

Uninsured migrants: Health insurance coverage and access to care among Mexican return migrants

“…Rural areas tend to have weaker infrastructure and more limited access to services, such as healthcare. Yet, migrants are disproportionately drawn from rural areas (Rendall & Parker, 2014). Thus, migrants may have weaker access to health care in part due to their spatial context.…”

“…Extensive research has documented significant improvements in health coverage under Seguro Popular . Some estimates suggest that as of 2012, Seguro Popular had enrolled upwards of fifty-million individuals, with disproportionate affiliation among poor and rural Mexicans (Knaul et al, 2012), who continue to be overrepresented among those migrating to the United States (Massey & Espinosa, 1997; Rendall & Parker, 2014). …”

The Education-Occupation Mismatch of International and Internal Migrants in Mexico, 2005–2012

“…Some studies have found evidence that Mexican migrants to the United States indeed have lower levels of education than their nonmigrant peers (Ambrosini and Peri 2012; Hanson 2006; Ibarraran and Lubotsky 2007), whereas others have found no selectivity, intermediate selectivity, or positive educational selectivity (Chiquiar and Hanson 2005; Feliciano 2005; Kaestner and Malamud 2014; McKenzie and Rapoport 2010; Orrenius and Zavodny 2005). In the most thorough analysis to date, Rendall and Parker (2014) found a strong negative educational selectivity of Mexican migrants over the span of the 1990s and 2000s. They largely attributed this negative selectivity to the lower levels of education in Mexican rural areas and small towns, where a disproportionate number of international migrants originate.…”

“…Whether Mexican migrants are disproportionately drawn from those with lower levels of education in their communities of origin is important because it could potentially inhibit immigrants’ economic mobility in the United States (Borjas 1985, 1995; Portes and Rumbaut 1996) and affect the labor market opportunities of others with a similar skill set on both sides of the border (Borjas 2003; Borjas et al 1997; Mishra 2007; but see Card 2005). Although findings from early studies on the selectivity of Mexican migrants were mixed, recent studies appear to confirm the hypothesis that migrants have lower levels of education than their counterparts who stay behind (Fernández-Huertas Moraga 2011; Rendall and Parker 2014). …”