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THE POVERTY REDUCTION SUCCESS OF PUBLIC TRANSFERS FOR WORKING AGE IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES IN THE UNITED STATES
Author(s) -
BOLLINGER CHRISTOPHER R.,
HAGSTROM PAUL
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7287.2010.00217.x
Subject(s) - immigration , refugee , poverty , economics , disadvantaged , demographic economics , probit model , welfare , development economics , political science , economic growth , law , market economy , econometrics
Although there has been some research on the impacts of federal tax and transfer policies on poverty rates for immigrants, virtually no previous work investigates the most disadvantaged group of immigrants: refugees. We estimate probit models for three standard measures of poverty. We find that while immigrants and refugees in particular had much higher poverty rates in the early 1990s, the strong economic growth of the 1990s led to a convergence of those poverty rates by 2000. Our analysis demonstrates that the improvement was largely because of economic conditions and that welfare reform policies appear to have little differential impact on immigrants or refugees. We also find that refugees show a markedly greater response to local labor market conditions than other immigrants or native born. ( JEL H3, I3, J1)