Volume 36, Number 2 (Spring) 2001
Crossley, Thomas F., James Ted McDonald, and Christopher Worswick. 2001. "Immigrant Benefit Recipient Revisited: Sensitivity to the Choice of Survey Years and Model Specification." Journal of Human Resources 36(2): 379-397.
Baker and Benjamin (1995) analyse the receipt of unemployment insurance by immigrant men using two years of the Canadian Survey of Consumer Finances. This study replicates their research on 13 of the annual surveys. Estimates are found to be sensitive to the choice of survey years. Furthermore, the standard fixed effects model of assimilation is rejected when tested against a model that allows for separate year-since-migration effects by arrival cohort. Estimates from the more general model do not indicate higher incidence of benefit receipt, ceteris paribus, among more recent cohorts or that immigrants assimilate toward greater receipt of benefits.
Thomas F. Crossley is an assistant professor of economics at York University and a Research Fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australia National University. James Ted McDonald is a lecturer in economics at the University of Tasmania. Christopher Worswick is an assistant professor of economics at Carleton University, Ottawa. The third author was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and a visitor at Queen's University during part of the writing of the paper. The authors have benefited from discussions with Michael Baker, Charles Beach and Dwayne Benjamin; the usual caveat applies. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning November 2001 through October 2004 from Christopher Worswick, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X