National Origin and Immigrant Welfare Recipiency

This paper explores national origin differences in the welfare recipiency of immigrantsto the United States. We develop an economic model of immigration which generatesimplications about how welfare utilization should vary according to characteristics of thecountry of origin. The empirical analysis reveals that a few source country characteristicsexplain over two-thirds of the variance of welfare recipiency rates across national origingroups, and changes in the average source country characteristics of the foreign-bornpopulation between 1970 and 1980 can account for most of the rise in immigrant welfare use that occurred over the decade