Immigration and Redistribution

By A. Alesina, Armando Miano, Stefanie Stantcheva. AEA Randomized Controlled Trials, 2018

483 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Does immigration change support for redistribution? We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how people perceive immigrants and how these perceptions influence their support for redistribution. We find striking misperceptions about the number and characteristics of immigrants. In all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and economically weaker-less educated, more unemployed, and more reliant on and favored by government transfers–than they actually are. In the experimental part of our paper, we show that simply making respondents think about immigration before asking questions about redistribution makes them support less redistribution, including actual donations to charities. The perception that immigrants are economically weaker and more likely to take advantage of the welfare system is strongly correlated with lower support for redistribution, much more so than the perceived cultural distance or the perceived share of immigrants. These findings are confirmed by further experimental evidence. Information about the true shares and origins of immigrants does not change support for redistribution. An anecdote about a “hard working” immigrant has somewhat stronger effects, but is unable to counteract the negative priming effect of making people think about immigration. Our results further suggest that narratives shape people's views on immigration more deeply than hard facts.

Subfields: Demography, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f98dae1cf99524ac3ca3804d729c93fa18c3452

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Demography

1. David Y. Yang
2. Leonardo Bursztyn

In Political Science and International Relations

1. K. Möhring
2. David Y. Yang
3. Leonardo Bursztyn

In Sociology and Political Science

1. K. Möhring
2. David Y. Yang
3. Leonardo Bursztyn

Citations in the corpus

• COVID‐19 policies in Germany and their social, political, and psychological consequences (2020, background): “For example, Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva (2018) show that natives’ usually overestimate the share of migrants and underestimate their labor market integration.”
• Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases (2018, unknown): “Arnold, Dobbie, and Yang (forthcoming) and Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva (2018) find that the kernel-of-truth hypothesis provides a good explanation of judges’ bias against blacks in bail decisions and residents’ beliefs about immigrants, respectively.”
• Immigration and preferences for redistribution in Europe1 (2019, unknown): “Alesina, Miano, and Stantcheva (2018) document the very large degree of negative misinformation about immigrants, which is widespread in the few countries they study.”
• Misperceptions About Others (2021, background): “F or p er so na l u se o nl y. Table 1 Overview of papers included in the meta-analyses Label Context Primary beliefs Treatment A-14 Voters in California Partisan differences in political opinions Yes ABL-20 Parents in Zambia Daughter’s ability and behavior Yes AMR-21 Households in Mozambique Suppor”
• Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration (2019, unknown): “1Another, somewhat related economic explanation for natives’opposition to immigration is that immigrants are (often incorrectly) perceived as a fiscal burden (Alesina et al., 2018).”