The Role of Source- and Host-Country Characteristics in ... - CReAM

For first-generation immigrants, we follow Bisin et al. (2011), Blau and Kahn (2011),
and Blau et al. (2011) and measure source-country variables at the time these immigrants
left that country. In doing so, we are able to measure the norms and values immigrants
grew up with and carry to their host country. We calculate the year the immigrant left
the home country by using information on the year of observation and the immigrant’s
years since arrival in the host country. 15 Since the latter is not a continuous variable but
is subdivided in predefined categories, we set years since migration equal to the mid-point
of each interval and to the lower bound of the top interval (i.e., 20 years). Thus, our
source-country data for first-generation immigrants span the years 1982 to 2010.
As Fernández and Fogli (2009) outline, the optimal point of time from which to take
the respective values for second-generation immigrants is not obvious. On the one hand, it
could be argued that the values of the culture proxy variables measured at the time the
immigrant’s parents left their home country would best reflect the culture of the country
of ancestry. The main problem with assigning the source-country characteristics based on
the year the immigrant’s parents left the country is that this information is not included
in our data. However, even if we were able to observe the parents’ year of arrival, data
limitations would permit us to use years prior to 1960, since values for most of our macro
indicators are not available prior to that year. Fernández and Fogli (2009) circumvent
this problem by using the current values of the source country indicators, arguing that
the values that parents and society transmit to second-generation immigrants might be
best reflected by a comparison of what the counterparts of these women are doing in the
country of ancestry at the time of observation. We follow this approach, thereby making
sure that the macro indicators are available for the majority of the source countries in our
sample, as they span the years 2002 to 2011 only. A possible drawback of the outlined
assignment rules is that we treat first- and second-generation immigrants differently, i.e.,
we use current values of the macro indicators for second-generation immigrants, while we
assign past values of these indicators to first-generation immigrants, making a comparison
of the behavior of both groups problematic. In order to assure that our results are not
driven by these assignment rules, we therefore perform sensitivity analyses in which we use
current instead of past values of all macro indicators for both first- and second-generation
immigrants.
The explanatory variables of our main interest are F LF P R j and F LF P R k , the female
labor force participation rates of the immigrant’s source and host country, respectively.
The source-country FLFP rate covers the rate of the economically active population for
women aged 15 to 65 in the immigrant’s country of ancestry. We apply this age restriction
in order to avoid the FLFPR to vary with the share of elderly among the population,
15 As previous studies, we thereby implicitly assume that the year the immigrant left her home country
equals the year she arrived in the host country. I.e., we assume that immigrants directly move from their
source country to their destination country and thus ignore the possible case of repeat migration.
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