How Long Do Mexican Migrants Work in the U.S.?

In injury and death cases in some jurisdictions, the economic valuations of the lost earnings of foreign born migrant workers are based on the wages the individuals would have been expected to earn while working in the U.S. had they not been injured or killed. In these instances, estimating the amount of time that the foreign born workers would have been expected to be active in the U.S. labor force is critical. In this paper we use data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) to estimate the number of years a Mexican born foreign worker could reasonably be expected to be employed or seeking employment in the U.S. labor market. We find, consistent with other studies of Mexican migrant workers, that the typical Mexican born worker who migrates to the U.S. to work does not spend their entire working life in the U.S. Our analysis shows the typical Mexican migrant can be expected to be active in the U.S. workforce between 6.1 and 11.1 years on average. In addition, our proportional hazards model suggests that the time spent in the U.S. is dependent on a number of individual-specific factors such as a worker's gender, age, social network, and martial status. The probabilities obtained from the proportional hazards model can be used in some injury and death cases to construct more detailed and precise estimates of the time a Mexican migrant worker works in the U.S