Abstract
Marriage patterns of immigrants can serve as an indicator of the degree of immigrant integration into their host countries. Literature on the economics of the household has focused on the role of the sex-ratio as an important determining factor in marriage market outcomes. Therefore, it is important to understand if and how the sex-ratio has changed over time and the mechanisms that may drive that change. In this paper, we explore recent changes in the sex-ratio among immigrants to the USA, focusing on the 24 highest sending countries of immigrants. First, building upon previous research, we document the non-gender-neutral nature of declining immigration to the USA. We approach this study from two different dimensions to document some of the forces driving this change in the sex-ratio. The first approach, focusing on changes between birth cohorts, demonstrates that immigration is declining more quickly for men than it is for women, leading to a decrease in the sex-ratio from above 100 and thus bringing about more gender-balanced migration. Second, we present results from an analysis of data on recently granted green cards, which suggests that the sex-ratio among this population is increasing from below 100, also bringing about more gender balance among immigrants. The period of study allows us to capture changes taking place pre- and post-Great Recession. We find declines in migration for both men and women during the Great Recession, but sharper recovery for women. Additionally, while migration has declined for both men and women in traditional receiving states, the stock of women has increased in non-traditional immigrant-receiving states.
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Notes
We thank an anonymous referee for the suggestion to explore heterogeneity in our results in this dimension.
We find negative age gaps for only 26.13% of men and positive age gaps for only 9.99% of women. Men are married to women their own age, 1, 2, and 3 years older to themselves at rates of 12.65%, 12.40%, 11.39%, and 9.72%, respectively. For women, these figures are 10.56%, 10.74%, 10.38%, and 9.49%. A histogram displaying these results is presented in the Appendix in Fig. 10.
We do show that we can reject a null hypothesis of a constant sex-ratio at the 10% level for 1- or 2-year lags in our preferred specification in Appendix Table 5, where instead of using a linear time trend for birth cohorts we instead run a regression with birth cohort indicator variables and present the p values on an F test of joint significance of these parameters.
With the weighted regression, we show that we can reject a null hypothesis of a constant sex-ratio at the 1% level from zero up to three lags in Appendix Table 6.
As before, we also examine changes at the state level. In Appendix Tables 7 through 10, we repeat our analysis at the state level. Tables 7 and 8 show that the expected pattern of a decline in the sex-ratio among similarly aged immigrants, coupled with an increase in the sex-ratio for large age gaps between men and women is not found in the average marriage market, but is found for the average immigrant when using variation at the state level. Tables 9 and 10 demonstrate that there is strong evidence for a changing sex-ratio in both the weighted and unweighted regressions, at least when focusing on sex ratios with zero, 1 or 2 years of lags.
Prior data, such as the 1990 census, only provided an intervaled variable for arrival in the USA (e.g. 1980–1982. However, all data we employ here provides the exact year of arrival.
Details of each estimation are presented in Appendix Figs. 11 through 13. Together, the three figures present results from an analysis conducted separately for each of the 24 countries that we examine. Cell sizes here are of course even smaller than in the above analysis, so we expect that there may be some large outliers, especially for the later cohorts. A note at the bottom of the figure for each country also reports a p value on an F test of equality in the birth year indicator variables. We observe that there has been significant variation at the 5% level in the sex-ratio between birth cohorts using our more reliable weighted regressions for 13 of the 24 countries that we examine: Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Vietnam and India. In addition, we also reject our null at the 10% but not 5% level for Haiti and El Salvador.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful for feedback received from presentations of this paper at the 2nd annual Society of Economics of the Household meetings in Paris in May of 2018, as well as from a seminar presentation at the Warsaw School of Economics in June of 2018. We also thank Sankar Mukhopadhyay and Mark Nichols for their helpful cosmments. Todd Sørensen also thanks the Warsaw School of Economics for providing housing for a research visit, during which the initial draft of this paper was written.
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Appendices
Appendix: Tables
Appendix: Figures
Age gaps in marriage in our sample. Source: 2000 U.S. Census and 2005–2016 American Community Survey, data made available from IPUMS
Sex ratio changes by birthplace (1). Data taken from 2-year lagged sex ratio, controls include age and birthplace fixed effects. Source: 2000 U.S. Census and 2005–2016 American Community Survey, data made available from IPUMS
Sex-ratio changes by birthplace (2). Data taken from 2-year lagged sex-ratio, controls include age and birthplace fixed effects. Source: 2000 U.S. Census and 2005–2016 American Community Survey, data made available from IPUMS
Sex-ratio changes by birthplace (3). Data taken from 2-year lagged sex ratio, controls include age and birthplace fixed effects. Source: 2000 U.S. Census and 2005–2016 American Community Survey, data made available from IPUMS
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Castañeda, A.H., Sørensen, T.A. Changing Sex-Ratios Among Immigrant Communities in the USA. J Econ Race Policy 2, 20–42 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41996-018-0025-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41996-018-0025-5