The
Impact of Immigration on Natives
in the Antebellum U.S. Labor Market, 1850-60
Joseph
P. Ferrie
Abstract
A negative effect of immigration on natives' wages or incomes has
been difficult to detect over the last 25 years. Such an impact
has been observed at the turn of the century, however. This difference
could result either from a genuine change in the impact of immigration
or from differences across studies in the impact and treatment of
the location decisions of immigrants and the internal migration
of natives. This study is prompted by these differences. It measures
the impact of immigration in the years before the Civil War, in
a setting in which it should be possible to detect an impact if
ever there was one: the analysis covers a period when the immigration
rate was more than twice as great as in the modern period, controls
for immigrants' location decisions, and examines both out-migrants
and non-migrants among the native born. It finds that the impact
of immigration on the income of natives was limited to skilled workers
in the urban northeast. The largest impact on this group came from
unskilled Irish immigrants. Though the results are not encouraging
to those who seek a large impact from immigration today, they help
explain both the reluctance of the United States to impose restrictions
on immigrant entry in this period and some important political developments
leading up to the Civil War.
Joseph P. Ferrie,
Department of Economics, Northwestern University
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