Immigration policy continues to be at the forefront of policy discussions, and the use of welfare benefits by immigrants has been hotly debated. In 1996, Congress enacted welfare reform legislation (PRWORA), which denied the use of most means-tested assistance to non-citizens and lowered...

Using a recent Spanish database, we show that remittances respond to cross-country differences in portfolio values, behavior consistent with immigrant’s access to trans-national networks. Responsiveness to portfolio variables is found to persist regardless of education level. There are,...

As recent efforts to reform immigration policy at the federal level have failed, states have started to take immigration matters into their own hands and researchers have been paying closer attention to state dynamics surrounding immigration policy. Yet, to this date, there is not a clear...

We estimate the crowding out of private transfers caused by 70 y Más, a public assistance program for the rural elderly in Mexico for whom private support is an important source of income. Using data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey and a triple differences approach, we find that...

We examine how remittances relate to the exchange rate, natural disasters and foreign aid focusing on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Using panel VAR methods, we are able to compensate for both data limitations and endogeneity issues. While remittances respond to innovations in the...

Summary We examine the impact of remittances on children's school attendance in the Dominican Republic. To isolate the effect of remittances from the effect of sometimes concurrent household out-migration, we focus on children in households without members currently residing in the United...

Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household...

This paper tests whether amnesty, a provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), affected the labor market outcomes of the legalized population. Using the Legalized Population Survey (LPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1987-1992, a...

Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household...