The Poverty Reduction Success Of Public Transfers For Working Age Immigrants And Refugees In The United States

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

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)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)191-206
Number of pages16
JournalContemporary Economic Policy
Volume29
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Business, Management and Accounting (all)
  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Public Administration

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Poverty Reduction Success Of Public Transfers For Working Age Immigrants And Refugees In The United States'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this