^ I Z A IZA DP No. 6075 Unemployment Benefits and Immigration: Evidence from the EU Corrado Giulietti Martin Guzi Martin Kahanec Klaus F. Zimmermann October 2011 Unemployment Benefits and Evidence from the Immigration EU Corrado Giulietti IZA Martin Guzi IZA Martin Kahanec Central European University and IZA Klaus F. Zimmermann IZA and University of Bonn IZA Discussion Paper No. 6075 October 2011 IZA P.O. Box 7240 53072 Bonn Germany Phone: +49-228-3894-0 Fax: +49-228-3894-180 E-mail: iza@iza.org Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6075 October 2011 ABSTRACT Unemployment Benefits and Immigration: Evidence from the EU The paper studies the impact of unemployment benefits on immigration. A sample of 19 European countries observed over the period 1993-2008 is used to test the hypothesis that unemployment benefit spending (UBS) is correlated with immigration flows from EU and non-EU origins. While OLS estimates reveal the existence of a moderate correlation for non-EU immigrants only, IV and GMM techniques used to address endogeneity issues yield, respectively, a much smaller and an essentially zero causal impact of UBS on immigration. All estimates for immigrants from EU origins indicate that flows within the EU are not related to unemployment benefit generosity. This suggests that the so-called "welfare migration" debate is misguided and not based on empirical evidence. JEL Classification: H53, J61 Keywords: immigration, unemployment benefit spending, welfare magnets, European Union Corresponding author: Corrado Giulietti IZA P.O. Box 7240 53072 Bonn Germany E-mail: giulietti@iza.org 1 Introduction In recent years the topic of "welfare migration" has raised controversial discussions and generated a substantial body of literature. There is concern that excessive participation in welfare or social security systems might be a more common phenomenon for immigrants than for natives (Cohen et al., 2009; Nannestad, 2007) or constitute a fiscal burden for host countries (De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009). The scope of this paper is to explore whether and how changes in countries' welfare generosity affect immigration. Instead of using an aggregate measure of welfare, such as total social public spending (which would include social assistance), this work focuses on unemployment benefits. These benefits result from a public insurance program in which participation is conditioned on compulsory contributions during periods of insured work. The contributory nature of the program makes immigrants' benefit recipiency directly linked to their employment experience. As described by Heitmueller (2005), expected income may be an important factor driving people's decision to migrate. Together with earnings during phases of employment, this also includes unemployment benefits that might be accessed during spells of unemployment. Hence, the presence of unemployment benefits may increase immigrants' expected income as well as help reduce its volatility. As a result, countries with particularly generous unemployment benefits could attract a greater number of (risk averse) immigrants. This hypothesis is tested by estimating the correlation between immigration inflows and unemployment benefit spending (UBS) as a fraction of the gross domestic product for a sample of European countries. Flows from EU and non-EU origins are analysed separately because immigrants from these two broad origins are likely to respond in different ways to UBS. This could be due to, for example, their diverse socio-economic characteristics or the different treatment in terms of immigration legislation (Anastassova and Paligorova, 2005), or even different eligibility criteria for unemployment program participation. In addition, while immigrants from EU origins are free to migrate within the EU, migrants from non-EU origins do not have the same freedom. Building upon recent studies which have found no (Pedersen et al., 2008) or moderate (De Giorgi and Pellizzari, 2009) evidence of the welfare magnet hypothesis, the article's main contribution is that it systematically studies the endogenous nature of UBS in the context of the welfare magnet hypothesis. Specifically, two potential channels of reverse causality between immigration and UBS are explored. The first is a case of simultaneity, whereby immigrants impact UBS through benefit take-up or by affecting the GDP of a country. This hypothesis is investigated by estimating the probability of unemployment benefits recipiency, conditional on unemployment, for both immigrants and natives. By doing so, it is possible to distinguish whether reverse causality arises due to the composition of immigrant population or due to immigrants' higher propensity to be in welfare. The second source of reverse causality relates to how policy reacts to immigration by cutting (or expanding) UBS. This conjecture is investigated by analysing whether changes in eligibility criteria and durations of unemployment benefits are associated with the evolution of immigration patterns. In order to address the potential endogeneity implied by reverse causality, UBS is instrumented 2 with the number of political parties within each winning parliamentary coalition. The rationale is that social expenditure is likely to be higher (lower) in countries where coalitions comprised of more (fewer) political parties (Bawn and Rosenbluth, 2006). While the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates indicate the existence of a moderate welfare magnet effect for non-EU immigrants, the implementation of instrumental variable (IV) and generalised method of moments (GMM) approaches reveals that the impact becomes smaller and statistically insignificant. This result is taken as evidence that reverse causality produces an upward bias in the correlation between immigration and UBS. Therefore, failing to account for such a mechanism implies an overstating of the effect that an exogenous change in UBS would produce on immigration. The analysis for EU immigrants indicates that they do not react to the UBS in host countries. This result might also reflect the different nature of within-EU migration. The article is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews studies about the welfare magnet hypothesis. Section 3 provides a description of the data and related summary statistics. The empirical strategy is outlined in Section 4, followed by OLS and IV results. Concluding remarks are to be found in Section 5. 2 Literature review The focus of the immigration literature on the relationship between welfare and immigration is rather recent. In the context of immigration to the USA, Borjas (1999) proposes that since immigrants in the country have already incurred large costs, they tend to cluster in states offering the highest welfare benefits. Moreover, the generosity of the welfare state will also affect the skill composition of immigration. In their simulations Briicker et al. (2002) find that welfare-generous countries attract relatively more low-skilled workers, whilst high-skilled workers prefer to settle in countries where social spending is lower, due to the lower tax burden needed to finance it. Hence, welfare generosity may induce a negative sorting of immigrants. In the context of EU enlargement Boeri and Briicker (2005) argue that when the risk of being unemployed is greater for immigrants than natives, the incentive to migrate increases with the replacement rate, and mainly for low-skilled individuals. Several empirical studies have explored the welfare magnet hypothesis. Using the European Community Household Panel for the period 1994-2001, De Giorgi and Pellizzari (2009) estimate the correlation between immigration and the net replacement rate (NRR), used as a proxy for welfare generosity. The NRR is defined as the ratio between unemployment benefits and average wages. They find that welfare generosity acts as a magnet for immigrants, but its impact is relatively weak. On the other hand, labour market conditions in the destination countries (such as unemployment rates and wages) and networks play a vital role on the decision to move. A similar analysis was carried out by Pedersen et al. (2008). Their study, based on detailed immigration flows to OECD countries for the period 1990-2000, mainly focuses on exploring the impact of social networks on immigration. However, their regression analysis also controls for total social expenditure, used as proxy for welfare generosity. Results from their preferred 3 specification do not support the existence of a positive correiation between immigration and sociai expenditure. To summarise, whiie theory suggests that immigrants - in particuiar iow-skiiied - are more iikeiy to move to generous countries, there is no strong empiricai evidence that this is actuaiiy the case. This paper contributes to the recent empiricai evidence in two ways: first it focuses on unemployment benefits as proxy for welfare generosity. Changes in public insurance programs affect the total income that working immigrants could obtain in the potential country of destination and hence influence their decision to move. Second, issues of endogeneity of welfare generosity are directly addressed by exploring reverse causality between UBS and immigration. 3 Data The sample covers 19 European countries (the EU-15, excluding Greece, for which immigration inflows were not available, plus the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic, Norway and Switzerland) from 1993-2008.1 Data were accessed from several sources. Gross immigration inflows come from the OECD Systéme ďobservation permanente des migrations (SOPEMI) database, which provides consistent and harmonised data over time. These are used to calculate immigration inflows expressed as percentage of total population in a country. Missing information on flows from some countries was complemented with the data used in Pedersen et al. (2008).2 From SOPEMI, information on the stock of foreign-born population was obtained as well and was used to construct the social network variable (see Pedersen et al., 2008). Data on UBS were collected from the OECD Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), which provides detailed information on social welfare spending in OECD countries.3 Complementary information on the characteristics of UBS (such as eligibility criteria and duration) and on expenditure on family, health and pension programmes was collected as well.4 Finally, statistics on the unemployment rate and per-capita GDP were obtained from the World Development Indicators (WDI) online database.5 Data on the number of parties in government coalitions were collected from the European Election Database.6 Summary statistics are reported in Table Al in the Appendix. 1 EU-15 member states are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The year 1993 coincides with the abolition of restrictions on internal labour mobility within the then European Community. Starting the analysis from this period facilitates the distinction between EU and non-EU flows. The panel is unbalanced because of the unavailability of data for some years. Details are presented in the Appendix. 2We are grateful to Peder Pedersen, Mariola Pytlíková and Nina Smith for kindly providing us part of the data used in their paper. 3Source: http://www.sourceoecd.org/database/OECDStat. 4Source: OECD (2002), OECD (2007). 5Source: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/. Per-capita GDP is PPP adjusted and expressed in 2005 US dollars. 6http: //www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/. 4 4 Empirical framework and results The hypothesis that immigration flows are correlated with UBS is tested with the following econometric model: where mn indicates immigration inflows expressed as percentage of the total population in country i at time t, and x^-i represents UBS. The equation is estimated for both EU and non-EU immigration inflows. The matrix z^-i includes, among other covariates, the social network variable. This corresponds to the stock of immigrants from the same origin of the flows (i.e. either EU or non-EU) as a percentage of the total population. Per-capita GDP and the unemployment rate of the destination country are also included in order to control for macroeconomic fundamentals correlated with immigration inflows. To adjust for the fact that immigrants do not immediately respond to incentives in the host countries, all explanatory variables are used in their lagged values. Lags might also address problems of endogeneity, but only partially, especially if persistent unobservable shocks contained in the error term are correlated with both the response variable and the covariates in the left hand side of equation (1). Issues of endogeneity are explored in the next subsection, where IV and GMM approaches are discussed. The model is estimated using country fixed effects; hence, the parameter of interest {[3) represents the correlation between immigration inflows and UBS estimated through within-country changes. Year dummies are included as well to control for time-varying shocks common to all countries. In addition, an indicator for the years after the 2004 EU enlargement is introduced to capture changes in immigration patterns common to all receiving countries.7 Due to the inhomogeneous size of countries, observations are weighted by population size.8 Table 1 reports the results of the estimation of OLS regression of equation (1). For sake of comparison, column (a) reports the results of the model without UBS. In such a model one would expect all components of zn-i to be correlated with immigration flows. For example, immigrants are more likely to choose locations where individuals from the same origin have already settled. Similarly, a higher per-capita GDP and better employment conditions are expected to attract, all things being equal, more immigrants. The estimates of networks, GDP and unemployment rate seem to confirm this hypothesis; however, the correlation is economically and statistically stronger for non-EU individuals.9 For non-EU immigrants GDP is positively 7While the inclusion of this variable does not substantially change the estimates, it does generally improve the fit of the model. 8Since weights must be constant when fixed effects are used, population size in the year 2000 is chosen. Sensitivity tests are carried out to assess the impact of observation weighting. 9 For example, a change in the stock of EU immigrants of 0.1% (e.g., from the mean value of 4.5 to 4.6%) is associated with an increase of immigration flows which varies between 0.012 and 0.014% across specifications (at the mean value this corresponds to an increase from 0.44 to around 0.45%). On the contrary, the increase of EU immigration flows associated with a 0.1% change in the network (e.g., from the mean value of 2.0 to 2.1%) is around 0.01% (at the mean value this corresponds to an increase from 0.12 to less than 0.13%). mu = a + f3xit-i + ■/.,, ") + 9i + 9t + eu 4.1 OLS results 5 correlated with immigration (the point estimates vary between 0.017 and 0.019 across models), while for immigrants coming from EU countries, this correlation is essentially zero.10 While for neither groups of immigrants is it possible to reject the null hypothesis that unemployment is correlated with immigration, the size of the estimate would have been, in any case, negligible.11 In column (b), UBS is added to the specification. The estimated coefficient is positive for non-EU immigrants, but negative for EU immigrants, although imprecisely estimated. Taken at its face value, the estimate of 0.058 for non-EU immigrants means that a 1% change in UBS is associated with a change in immigration flows of less than 0.01%. A practical example is useful: if the UK were to experience a substantial increase in UBS from, say, 1.13% (the mean value) to 3.15% (the mean value in Germany), then there would be an associated change in immigration flows from 0.45% to 0.57%. In this particular case a growth of UBS of a factor of nearly three correlates with a growth of about 1/4 in immigration flows. In contrast, the estimated coefficient for EU immigrants is essentially zero in terms of economic impact. In column (c), a model which includes other major social expenditure components (health, pensions and family) is estimated. The rationale is to control for potential omitted variables that might confound the correlation between UBS and immigration flows. After including these additional components, the estimate of UBS for non-EU immigrants increases only slightly (0.061 vs 0.058); however, this difference, besides being statistically insignificant at the 10% level, is also very small in terms of size. Similarly for EU immigrants, the addition of other expenditure components does not affect the essentially zero estimate.12 Finally, in column (d), a model without weights is estimated. The UBS point estimates are, in absolute terms, slightly larger, although the general pattern remains unchanged. The weighted estimates are generally preferred, especially for non-EU immigrants, as they are closer to the predictions of migration theory both in terms of signs and magnitude. In summary, the OLS analysis demonstrates that there is moderate association between UBS and non-EU immigration inflow; however, the same cannot be said of EU immigrants. It should be noted that these results are mere correlation estimates. Hence a more causal interpretation would require assessing how unobservable factors attract immigrants. The following section examines the potential threat to the internal validity of these results due to reverse causality. 10 Since the logarithm of GDP is used in the regression, the estimate for non-EU immigration flows means that a 1% change on GDP is associated with a change of immigration flows from 0.44%, the mean value, to around 0.45%. 11 Since the inclusion of fixed effects absorbs cross-country, time-unvarying differences, a potential explanation for this weak relationship is that unemployment within each country does not vary substantially over time. Inspection of the unemployment rates confirms this conjecture: only Ireland, the Slovak Republic and Spain exhibit important changes during the period under analysis, while unemployment rates are rather constant for the remaining countries. 12The estimates of the other components for non-EU immigration flows are 0.066 (s.e. 0.035) for family expenditure, -0.028 (s.e. 0.014) for health expenditure and -0.039 (s.e. 0.025) for pension expenditure. For EU flows, the corresponding estimates are -0.001 (s.e. 0.010), 0.004 (s.e. 0.006) and -0.011 (s.e. 0.008). 6 Table 1: OLS estimates of immigration inflow rates (a) (b) (c) (d) Non-EU immigrants UBS 0.058** 0.061* 0.066*** (0.028) (0.031) (0.021) Stock of non-EU immigrants 0.141*** 0.129*** 0.123*** 0.079* (0.028) (0.026) (0.028) (0.039) Per-capita GDP 0.017** 0.019** 0.018** 0.007 (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.004) Unemployment rate -0.007 -0.015 -0.005 -0.026 (0.018) (0.017) (0.016) (0.015) Constant -0.056** -0.063** -0.053** -0.020 (0.023) (0.024) (0.021) (0.014) R2 0.64 0.65 0.68 0.52 EU immigrants UBS -0.009 -0.003 -0.012 (0.012) (0.013) (0.013) Stock of EU immigrants 0.072*** 0.075*** 0.068** 0.094*** (0.021) (0.025) (0.027) (0.021) Per-capita GDP 0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.003 (0.002) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) Unemployment rate 0.001 0.002 0.004 0.006 (0.005) (0.006) (0.006) (0.005) Constant 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.008 (0.006) (0.007) (0.007) (0.010) R2 0.28 0.29 0.29 0.37 Weights Y Y Y N Other welfare components N N Y N N 248 248 248 248 Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. */**/*** indicate significance at the 10/5/1% level. All models are estimated by country fixed effects and contain year dummies. Weights are population counts of each country in the year 2000. Other welfare components are expenditure on health, family and pensions. 4.2 Is unemployment benefit spending endogenous? Two potential channels of endogeneity that might threaten the causal interpretation of the OLS estimates are now discussed. Both are cases of reverse causality, whereby social expenditure is a function of immigration. Presence of simultaneity bias is best explained by the means of the following system of equations: m = [3s + e (2a) s = 7m + r\ (2b) Equation (2a) is a simplified version of (1), and equation (2b) states that social welfare spending is a function of immigration. Estimation of (2a) by OLS will lead to simultaneity bias, since: plim/3 = f3OLS + Cov I ,e) x-L— = p + 1