The migration of unskilled youth: Is there any wage gain?



Wage levels are higher in industry than in all other sectors, especially the service sector, for migrants
and for non-migrants. The size effect is fairly pronounced in all cases: the larger the company the
higher the wage.

We distinguish work areas on an urban-periurban-rural gradient. It is known that wages are lower in
rural than in urban areas. The estimation brings out an interesting point: wage differences between
different areas are higher for non-migrants than for migrants. For the former, those who work in urban
and periurban areas are the best paid. The further their place of work from urban areas, the less they
are paid. For the latter, the only significant fact is the lower wage obtained when people work in a
“remote” rural area. It seems that when people migrate to work in a rural area, they obtain better
wages than “native” workers5. We hypothesise that, in such cases, companies pay to attract workers
to those areas.

5 Conclusion

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of migration on wage for French unskilled
youth.
The issue is considered from a search-theoretic perspective and we take into account the
possibility of self-selection. The first results we present show a negative direct impact of migration on
wage and positive auto-selection effect on migration. In fact, there are two complementary effects: a
positive selection effect in earnings of migrants and a negative selection effect in earning of non-
migrants.

Bibliography:

Borjas, G.J., Bronars S.G., Trejo S.J., 1991, Self-Selection and Internal Migration in the United-States,
Journal of Urban Economics, pp. 159-185.

Détang-Dessendre C., Schmitt B., Piguet V., 1999, Les déterminants micro-économiques des
migrations urbain-rural en fonction de la position dans le cycle de vie
, Working paper
INRA-ENESAD
Dijon, 99/4.

Greene W., 1993, Econometric Analysis, Macmillan, New-York

Greenwood M.J., 1975, Research on internal migration in the United States, a survey. Journal of
Economic Literature
, vol 13, pp. 397-433.

Greenwood M.J., 1985, Human migration, theory, models, and empirical studies, Journal of
Regional Science
, vol 25, pp. 521-544.

Herzog, H.W., Hofler, R.A., Schlottmann, A.M., 1985, Life on the Frontier : Migrant Information,
Earnings and Past Mobility,
the Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 67, pp. 373-382
Heckman J., 1979, Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error, Econometrica, vol 47 (Jan),
pp. 153-161.

5 This term is not to be taken in a literal sense.



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