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The Benefits of Immigrants to Canada: Evidence on Tax and Public Services
Abstract
The life-cycle theory implication that immigrants, being young at the time of arrival, should benefit the native-born population in a tax-transfer system is analyzed for Canada. Microdata from the 1981 Canadian Census of Population are used. Consumption of major public services and payment of major taxes by the average immigrant and non-immigrant households are considered. It is observed that even after they have stayed for 35 years in Canada, immigrant households are a source of public fund transfers to non-immigrants. This confirms the life-cycle net benefit hypothesis. Implications for public policy with respect to immigration policy are suggested.
... Census microdata have also been integrated with other microdata not stemming from a census. Akbari (1989) for example, combined Canadian PUST with a series of data sets about differences in the consumption of public services by immigrants. His work allowed the Canadian government to assess whether it was making a positive net gain in terms of tax income, by encouraging immigration. ...
p>Identifying the different social characteristics and location of residential populations is an important task (Shevky and Bell 1955), both for social theorists and for the machinery of state and administration. Currently, the data with which the relationship between social character and residential location is explored, are inadequate for the task. This inadequacy stems from the lack of detailed information about social structure at a fine spatial scale (Birkin and Clarke, 1995). The source most commonly applied to issues of socio-spatial structure is the Small Area Statistics (SAS), drawn from the 1991 UK Census Of Population. The SAS data are aggregate and do not provide detailed information on the characteristics of households or individuals for the small spatial areas which they describe. They are therefore often used to provide single classifications of areas, based upon their aggregate census characteristics.
In 1993 a new, disaggregate, data set was released from the 1991 Census of Population. The Samples of Anonymised Records (SAR) provide considerable detail about the characteristics of two samples of households and individuals. However, a restriction on the spatial resolution of these data is employed to assist in preserving the anonymity of sample members. Alone, the SAR is not suited to the detailed analysis of socio-spatial structure required.
Through the use of social theory (Harvey, 1989), an analogy may be drawn between the problems in using aggregate census data and those faced by Earth Observation (EO) researchers in the analysis of satellite imagery. EO researchers have developed solutions to these problems, through the fuzzy classification of small areas. Such an approach is adapted for use with census data, through deriving a classification of households from the SAR and inferring the proportional presence of these household classes in a small area, from the SAS.</p
... For a welfare state like Canada, it is unlikely that the government would choose to decrease the payments for beneficiaries, but instead to increase the contribution from workers, which is a part of social savings. According to the life-cycle theory first proposed by Samuelson (1975) [6], a society with relatively more young workers will experience a higher level of social savings. Therefore, having more young workers in society can buffer the stress from Canada Pension Plan. ...
... Comme cette étude se penche sur le lien entre l'immigration et les finances publiques, une attention particulière a été portée sur la contribution des immigrants à l'équilibre budgétaire. Plusieurs recherches portant sur différents pays (incluant le Canada) concluent à une contribution nette positive des immigrants à l'équilibre budgétaire du gouvernement (Dungan et al., 2013;Akbari, 1995Akbari, , 1989DeVoretz et Ozsomer, 1999). De plus, nous utilisons l'hypothèse plutôt conservatrice, au vu de la littérature existante et du tableau 8, que les immigrants ont une consommation de services publics identique à celle des natifs. ...
Depuis de nombreuses années, les gouvernements qui se succèdent au Québec
cherchent par différents moyens à améliorer l’arrimage entre l’immigration et les besoins du marché du travail. Les solutions mises de l’avant consistent généralement à modifier le
nombre d’immigrants accueillis sur le territoire ou les critères d’admissibilité, alors que
d’autres miseraient plutôt sur l’intégration afin d’éliminer certains écarts, par exemple en
matière d’emploi, entre les immigrants et la population d’accueil. Le gouvernement actuel
s’est inscrit dans cette continuité en présentant en 2019 un projet de loi à travers lequel il
propose diverses mesures liées à l’immigration au Québec. Cette étude a pour objectif de
quantifier l’effet potentiel, à moyen terme (2040), sur le solde budgétaire de l’État québécois de différents scénarios en lien avec l’immigration. Pour ce faire, on utilise le modèle de
microsimulation SIMUL qui permet d’en simuler les impacts au niveau démographique et sur
les finances publiques. Les résultats illustrent que tout changement du nombre d’immigrants admis au Québec n’a que très peu d’effets sur le solde budgétaire à terme (en 2040).
Par contre, nous démontrons qu’un scénario où les immigrants sont pleinement intégrés au
marché du travail a un effet positif de 7 milliards de dollars sur les finances publiques (en
2040). Des scénarios plus réalistes, où les écarts en matière d’emploi et de revenu entre les immigrants et la population d’accueil ne sont pas entièrement résorbés, donnent tout de même des effets appréciables qui aident à atténuer les pressions provenant du vieillissement démographique.
This paper has a main ambition. It evaluates the impact of immigration on GDP per worker for ten European countries in order to fill the gap with numerous studies focusing on variables other than growth (wages, unemployment, innovation or public finances). We show that there is no obvious relationship between growth and immigration for a majority of economies. It is only when we allow for the possibility of structural breaks that we find the existence of cointegration between the two variables for six countries. Moreover, our results suggest that the impact of immigration remains rather modest on average.
Despite strong anti-immigrant backlash globally, some in Canada are arguing that to be a more prosperous and innovative country with more influence on the world stage, Canada needs to significantly increase its population. Given Canada’s extremely low birth rate and sluggish growth, immigration could hold the key to such economic aspirations. This chapter weighs the effects immigration and thus a larger population size might have on Canadian prosperity. Although there are both positive and negative effects, this chapter suggests that Canada’s economic growth, as well as its labour market, are intrinsically linked to the inflow of migrants who can bring new talent and bridge demographic gaps. Moreover, immigration is not only important in terms of domestic policy. Canada’s positionality within the larger global order, and its prosperity as a middle-power, is largely dependent on its pro-immigration stance and open-borders policy.
Alle westlichen Länder sind heute von Zuwanderungen betroffen. Die ökonomischen, sozialen und kulturellen Auswirkungen der Zuwanderung für die Einheimischen sind Gegenstand öffentlicher und wissenschaftlicher Kontroversen. Sorgen um negative Wirkungen der Immigration auf den Wohlstand der Einheimischen haben in Deutschland und einigen anderen europäischen Ländern zu einem Anwachsen der Ausländerfeindlichkeit beigetragen.
The task assigned by Herbert Giersch to this paper is to discuss policy decisions about immigration into the North American and Northern European countries. To that end it draws on those ideas from my 1989 book, The Economic Consequences of Immigration, which are especially relevant to the topic. Supporting data for the propositions may be found in that book.1 In addition, some new tentative findings about tax-and-transfer policies are presented below.
L'argument central de cet article est que le vieillissement démographique est devenu un paradigme guide important pour les discussions et recherches en politique publique canadienne. Quoique l'on pense généralement que le processus de vieillissement démographique est un phénomène simple, ses relations inextricables avec la situation socio-économique à l'intérieur de laquelle il se produit, le rend difficile à comprendre en dehors de cette situation. Les causes et les effets tendent à se confondre quand l'on tente de démêler les relations complexes qui lient le vieillissement démographique à la structure sociale canadienne. Dans cet article, nous explorons certaines des causes et des effets malcompris du vieillissement démographique dans le cadre particulier des discussions de politiques canadiennes. Nous éclairons en particulier plusieurs aspects récents des liens complexes entre le vieillissement démographique, et la structure et politique socio-économique, y compris les marchés en changement, la dépendance économique et les exigences de pensions et de services à la santé. /// The central argument of this paper is that demographic aging has emerged as an important guiding paradigm in Canadian public policy discussions and research. Although the process of demographic aging is generally thought to be straightforward, its inextricable connections with the socio-economic situation in which it occurs, renders it difficult to understand apart from that situation. Causes and consequences tend to merge in the attempt to disentangle the complex relationships of demographic aging to Canadian social structure. In this paper, some of the less well understood causes and consequences of demographic aging are explored within the specific context of Canadian policy-oriented thinking. Several contemporary aspects of the complex linkages between demographic aging, socio-economic structure and policy are highlighted, including shifting markets, economic dependency and pension and health care requirements.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
"The effects of immigrant status, French ethnicity, and language fluency in Canada has received relatively little attention in the economics literature. Moreover, the coverage of the few studies available is highly selective, and the results often conflict. This paper seeks to correct these deficiencies by using data from the 1971 and 1981 Censuses of Canada to analyze the labor market adjustment of immigrants and French Canadians, as well as the role of language in the Canadian labor market. The analysis is conducted in a manner which will facilitate comparison with previous studies of immigrants and their children in Canada and in other countries. In addition, by comparing 1971 and 1981 Census data, the paper highlights the similarity and changes in patterns over the decade."
This paper uses data from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education to compare the receipt of transfers by families headed by male and female immigrants and those headed by native-born Americans. The average level of transfers is found to be considerably higher among families headed by immigrants, but this is almost entirely the result of the higher average age of family members among the immigrant group-a reflection of the large inflows of immigrants into the U.S. during the pre-1924 period. When age and other factors are held constant, immigrant families are found to be considerably less likely to rely on welfare than native families, and their receipts from social insurance programs are found to be only slightly higher. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
Since the imposition of restrictive entry quotas in the early 1920s, U.S. immigration issues have generally been of little concern to economists. First binding quotas, and later the effects of the depression and World War II, resulted in sharply reduced immigration compared with levels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. When, during the 1950s, immigration again began to rise toward quota ceilings, population was growing rapidly from other sources, and thus immigration continued to contribute relatively little to U.S. population growth. Moreover, during this period mortality among the aging stock of foreign-born more than offset net immigration, with the consequence that the stock declined by 4.6 million between 1930 and 1970. What attention was
directed at international migration issues during this half century was mainly on the part of economic historians, who focused on the period of unrestricted flows, and on the part of those interested in the brain drain, who were concerned with the flow of high-level manpower from poor to rich countries.
Some Economic Impacts of the Immigrant Population in Canada. Un-published Ph.D. thesis, British ColumbiaThe Use of Transfer Pay-434 Ather H. Akbari This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat17:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ments by Immigrants
- S A H Akbari
- F D Blau
Akbari, S.A.H. (1987) Some Economic Impacts of the Immigrant Population in Canada. Un-published Ph.D. thesis, British Columbia, Simon Fraser University. Blau, F.D. (1984) 'The Use of Transfer Pay-434 Ather H. Akbari This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 21:17:09 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ments by Immigrants.' Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 37:2:222-39.
Population Aging and Im-migration Policy in Canada: Implications and Prescriptions
- D K Foot
Foot, D.K. (1986) 'Population Aging and Im-migration Policy in Canada: Implications and Prescriptions,' Population Working Paper No. 1, Policy Development, Canada Employ-ment and Immigration Commission.