Moving from the South to the North, Migrants Improve Their Income. But Not Their Position

THIS IS THE FINDING OF A RESEARCH STUDY BY SIMON GOERLACH THAT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT DATA FROM 1985 TO 2012

Most migrants that relocated from Southern to Northern Italy in the last thirty years did better in absolute terms, but they did not improve their relative position within the earnings distribution of workers in the same region. This is the preliminary result of joint work by Joseph-Simon Goerlach (scholar of Economics and Migration at the Department of Economics) with Federica Ricci (IGIER and MSc student at Bocconi).

In Grading Up and Down: Evidence from Italian Migration, they used a longitudinal dataset from the Italian national social security institute (INPS). The dataset has a unique feature: it allows researchers to follow individuals across different locations within Italy. The authors focus on dependent workers aged 20-60 who migrated from Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily to Central and Northern Italy in the years 1985-2012.

The authors compare the individuals’ pre-migration quantile within the earnings distribution in the South and their post-migration quantile within the Northern earnings distribution. “We discovered that approximately two thirds of migrants experiences a gain in earnings after moving North, but their relative position within the earnings distribution of the population in the same region deteriorates on average”. The work is still in its preliminary phase, but professor Goerlach highlights a difference between male and females migrants: “Men who migrate are more likely to be blue collar workers whereas women are more likely to be white collar workers than in the overall Southern labor force. Once North, female migrants did better than they did in the South just before migration during the 1980s, while in later years migration on average was associated with a worsened relative position”.

The authors relied on two measures of income, namely annual earnings and weekly wages. The former takes into account the number of weeks in which an income is earned. Data shows that emigrants are more negatively selected in terms of earning than in terms of wages, suggesting that men who migrate from the South tend to have less regular jobs.

Read more about this topic:
The Mark of the Great Migrations. Article by Andrea Colli
Massimo Anelli. The Political Costs of Emigration
Alessandra Casarico. Market Benefits for Legalized Immigrants
Carlo Devillanova. The Uninformed Find the Door to Healthcare Shut
Paolo Pinotti. Foreign Students at School: How to Break Educational Segregation
Graziella Romeo. The Contradictions of the European Legal System
 

by Claudio Todesco