Mexican Migrants to the United States: an Alternative Methodology
| Autor | José Martínez |
| Cargo | Department of Economics, University of North Texas |
| Páginas | 1-30 |
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Ensayos Revista de Economía–Volumen XXXII, No.1, mayo 2013, pp. 1-30
José Martínez
Fecha de recepción: 07/III/2012 Fecha de aceptación: 03/IX/2012
Abstract
Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the United States. There is a lack of consensus about whether migrants from Mexico are positively or negatively selected. Data from the Mexican census suggest migrants are negatively selected while data from the U.S. census suggest intermediate selection. Both data sources undercount migrants, with Mexican sources systematically undercounting more educated migrants and U.S. sources undercounting less educated migrants. Net migration techniques are used to estimate migration flows during the 1990s and obtain estimates which present a more accurate characterization of Mexican immigrants. Three main conclusions are reached. First, the net flow of Mexicans to the United States during the 1990s was about 10 percent less than the U.S. census data suggest. Second, migrants are younger and less female than suggested by the U.S. census, but older and more female than suggested by the Mexican census. Third, U.S. census data significantly overstate the educational attainment of migrants. However, the disagreement in the literature on migrant selection results less from who is counted in Mexican and U.S. data and more on the responses given to the Mexican and U.S. census questions on schooling.
JEL Classification: F22, O15, J15.
Keywords: Net Migration, Mexico, Selectivity.
Resumen
Los mexicanos son el grupo de inmigrantes más grande en los Estados Unidos. No existe consenso sobre si los inmigrantes mexicanos están autoseleccionados positiva o negativamente. Datos del censo de población de México sugieren que están seleccionados negativamente, mientras que datos
Department of Economics, University of North Texas. Address: 1155 Union Circle Denton, TX 76203, United States. Email: Jose.Martinez@unt.edu
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de los Estados Unidos sugieren que están seleccionados de manera intermedia; sin embargo, ambas fuentes de datos subestiman el número de inmigrantes. Fuentes de datos de México sistemáticamente subestiman a migrantes con mayores niveles de escolaridad; mientras que fuentes de datos de los Estados Unidos, subestiman a los de menor escolaridad. Usando técnicas de migración neta para estimar los flujos migratorios durante la década de 1990, se obtienen estimadores que presentan una identificación más precisa de los migrantes mexicanos. Se llega a tres conclusiones principales. Primera, el flujo neto de mexicanos hacia los Estados Unidos durante 1990 fue cerca de diez por ciento menor al aludido por los datos de los Estados Unidos. Segunda, los migrantes representan una mayor cantidad de jóvenes y una menor cantidad de mujeres, que lo sugerido por los datos de los Estados Unidos; pero son más los adultos mayores y también más mujeres, que los sugeridos por el censo de México. Tercera, los datos de Estados Unidos sobreestiman significativamente la escolaridad de los inmigrantes. Sin embargo, acerca de la falta de consenso en cuanto a la literatura sobre la selectividad de los migrantes, los resultados muestran que es menor la escolaridad de quien es contado en México y en los Estados Unidos; pero es más de lo que se obtiene de las respuestas a las preguntas del censo sobre escolaridad.
Clasificación JEL: F22, O15, J15.
Palabras Clave: Migración neta, México, Selectividad.
Introduction
The 2000 U.S. population census counted 33 million individuals born outside the United Sates (U.S.Census Bereau, 2004) in 2000. The Mexican born is estimated to be 9.3 million, and represent the largest number from any single country. Those immigrants born in Mexico differ in educational attainment and age distribution from the native born population is uncontroversial. But there is less agreement on how migrants from Mexico compare with the Mexican population remaining in country.
The educational content of migration flows has been of longstanding interest to development economists concerned about “brain drain.” Docquier and Marfouk (2006) unify census data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and find that internationally, migrants are divided roughly into three equal groups having 8 or fewer years of schooling, 9 to 12 years of schooling and more than 12 years of schooling. They note that their data underrepresent flows of illegal migrants, who are not generally well measured by receiving country census agencies. Since illegal migrants are both large in number and likely to have lower education
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Mexican Migrants to the United States: an Alternative Methodology 3
levels, this has an effect of undetermined magnitude on the estimates of the educational content of migrant flows. The exercise we undertake in this paper provides a measure of the magnitude of the bias in these estimates for one large bilateral migration flow.
The educational attainment of Mexican migrants to the U.S. can be measured using data from either the Mexican or U.S. census. There is a clear pattern in the literature: analysis using data from Mexico finds that migrants have less schooling than those remaining in Mexico, while analysis using data from the United States finds more positive selection. Because of the nature of undercounted sectors of the migrant population, there is reason to believe that data from both the Mexican and U.S. census are biased, but in opposite directions. We show that estimates based on the method of net migration, while not without error, do not suffer from the obvious biases of the estimates relying on direct data taken from either of the two censuses.
The two data sources produce a different picture with respect to the age and gender of migrants as well. Among the Mexicans born arriving in the United States between 1995 and 2000, U.S. census data indicate that 60% are male and 40% are female. Among those who left Mexico for the United States without returning during the same years, the Mexican census reports that 75% are male and only 25% are female.
Given the issues with the current estimates of the size and characteristics of migration flows, we pursue in this paper an alternative approach of estimating the net outflow and characteristics of migrants from Mexico during the 1990s. We use data from the 1990 and 2000 Mexican and U.S. population censuses to calculate net migration from Mexico. Net migration compares the size of an age cohort in an earlier census with the size of an appropriately older cohort in a later census, adjusting for mortality. For example, we compare the number of 8-12 year olds in 1990 with the number of 18-22 year olds in 2000. We use data on the number of deaths to account for the reduction in cohort size due to mortality. The difference between the adjusted cohort sizes represents the estimate of net migration during the decade. By comparing age, education and gender cohorts, we provide a profile of migrants. Since about 98 percent of those who migrate from Mexico come to the United States, we obtain a very good estimate of the flows from Mexico to the United States.
We face several challenges in pursuing the net migration approach. For example, the percentage of the population with an unreported age is significantly higher in the 2000 Mexican census than the 1990 Mexican census, and the tendency for ages to be reported as numbers ending in 0 or 5 also changes between 1990 and 2000. The proportion of the population in
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the U.S. census which is categorized as foreign born, country not specified, is much higher in the 1990 census than in the 2000 census (Cresce, Ramirez and Spencer, 2001). These changes across time result less from changes in the responses of households and more from decisions by the census bureau with respect to allocation, assigning values to non-responses. The percentage of the population in the United States uncounted by the census between 1990 and 2000 is also widely seen as having fallen.1We describe how we address these and related issues in more detail later in the paper. Importantly, while the solutions we pursue might add noise to the estimates, we believe that the migration estimates coming from the net migration analysis are much less subject to the biases of those relying directly on data from either the Mexican or U.S. census.
Our first main finding is that the net flow of Mexicans to the United States was about 10 percent less than the U.S. census data suggest. While the U.S. census data indicate that 4.39 million Mexicans between the ages of 3 and 72 (in 1990) came to the United States during the 1990s, we estimate the flow to be 4.04 million.2Second, we find that the age distribution of migrants lies between that obtained using U.S. data and that obtained using Mexican data, but is closer to that obtained from the U.S. data. Third, we find that the education attainment also lies between that obtained from the two censuses, but is much closer to the estimates obtained from the Mexican census. This suggests that the U.S. census significantly overstates the educational attainment of Mexican migrants. The differences in the estimates of educational attainment are too large to be explained by the differences in who is counted by the two censuses, implying the Mexicans respond differently to the questions on educational attainment in the U.S and Mexican censuses. Since there is much less reason to think that the educational attainment of the children born to Mexican migrants is similarly biased, this implies that the gain in schooling from the first to second generation is much larger than the literature currently estimates.
1The U.S. Census Bureau’s Executive Steering Committee for Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE) estimated...
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