Selective Outmigration and the Estimation of Immigrants’ Earnings Profiles

This chapter begins by documenting that temporary migrations are not only very common, but that outmigration of immigrants is selective both in terms of migrants’ individual characteristics and their economic outcomes. We then examine the problems that arise when estimating immigrants’ earnings profiles when outmigration is selective, and discuss the identifying assumptions needed to answer three different questions on immigrants’ earnings careers. We show how better data can help to relax these assumptions, suggest appropriate estimators, and provide an illustration using simulated data. We finally provide an overview of existing papers that use different types of data to address selective outmigration when estimating immigrants’ earnings profiles.