The Wage Impact of the Marielitos: A Reappraisal

By George J Borjas. World Scientific Studies in International Economics, 2017

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article brings a new perspective to the analysis of the wage effects of the Mariel boatlift crisis, in which an estimated 125,000 Cuban refugees migrated to Florida between April and October, 1980. The author revisits the question of wage impacts from such a supply shock, drawing on the cumulative insights of research on the economic impact of immigration. That literature shows that the wage impact must be measured by carefully matching the skills of the immigrants with those of the incumbent workforce. Given that at least 60% of the Marielitos were high school dropouts, this article specifically examines the wage impact for this low-skill group. This analysis overturns the prior finding that the Mariel boatlift did not affect Miami’s wage structure. The wage of high school dropouts in Miami dropped dramatically, by 10 to 30%, suggesting an elasticity of wages with respect to the number of workers between −0.5 and −1.5.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc8bf11b894bdfc1cf32c61419ebedfe35ab95a2

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Citations in the corpus

Using Synthetic Controls: Feasibility, Data Requirements, and Methodological Aspects (2021, methodology): “have also been adopted as the main tool for data analysis across different sides of the issues in recent prominent debates on the effects of immigration (Borjas, 2017; Peri and Yasenov, 2019) and minimum wages (Allegretto et al.”
Consequences of forced migration: A survey of recent findings (2019, unknown): “after the collapse of the Soviet Union is Borjas and Doran (2012).”
The impact of forced displacement on host communities: A review of the empirical literature in economics (2019, methodology): “However, both Borjas (2017) and Borjas and Monras (2017) find a negative and significant impact on relative wages for a certain subroup of low skilled individuals defined as non-Hispanic male high-school dropouts aged 25-59 who have worked and received wages, in sharp contrast with high school…”
Labor market concerns and support for immigration (2020, background): “However, the ultimate effects of immigration on labor market conditions are still being debated (Borjas, 2014; Card and Peri, 2016), including the effects of the Mariel boatlift (Borjas, 2017; Clemens, 2017).”