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Do immigrants improve the health of natives?
Journal article

Do immigrants improve the health of natives?

  • Giuntella O University of Oxford, Nuffield College and Blavatnik School of Government, 10 Merton Street, OX14JJ Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: osea.giuntella@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.
  • Mazzonna F Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Department of Economics, via Buffi 13, CH-6904 Lugano, Switzerland; Munich Center for the Economics of Ageing (MEA), Munich, Germany. Electronic address: fabrizio.mazzonna@usi.ch.
  • 2015-08-25
Published in:
  • Journal of health economics. - 2015
Health
Immigration
Occupational choice
Emigrants and Immigrants
Employment
Female
Germany
Health Status
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Occupational Health
Occupations
Social Class
Workload
English This paper studies the effects of immigration on health. Specifically, we merge information on individual characteristics from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2009) with detailed local labour market characteristics, and we then exploit the longitudinal component of the data to determine how immigration affects the health of both immigrants and natives over time. We find that immigrants to Germany are healthier than natives upon their arrival (the healthy immigrant effect) but that immigrants' health deteriorates over time. We show that the convergence in health is heterogeneous across immigrants and occurs more rapidly among those working in more physically demanding jobs. Because immigrants are significantly more likely to work in strenuous occupations, we investigate whether changes in the spatial concentration of immigrants affect the health of the native population. Our results suggest that immigration reduces the likelihood that residents will report negative health outcomes. We show that these effects are concentrated in blue-collar occupations and are stronger among low-educated natives. Improvements in natives' average working conditions and workloads help explain the positive effects of immigration on the health of the native population.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/177408
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