Return Migration and the 'Healthy Immigrant Effect'

According to the "healthy immigrant effect" (HIE), immigrants upon arrival are healthier than locally born residents. However, this health advantage is supposed to diminish or even disappear over a relatively short period and the immigrants' health status is converging to that of the natives. The causes for this gradient of immigrants' health are subject to an ongoing discussion and the underlying trajectories are not yet fully understood. This paper investigates whether return migration can serve as an additional explanation for the declining health of immigrants, and thus aims at shedding some light on the trajectories underlying the HIE. The data used are drawn from 13 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. Using a random-effects probit model, this analysis explores the factors influencing re-migration by means of a sample of 4,426 migrants. In line with the existing literature, the study shows that e.g. having spouse and children in the home country, or being non-working or jobless yield a higher return probability, whereas all factors associated with attachment to Germany (e.g. language fluency, German citizenship, house ownership) reduce the probability of re-migration. Additionally, the results indicate that men reporting poorer health ('good', 'satisfactory', 'poor' or 'bad') are significantly less likely to return home relative to male immigrants who describe their health as 'very good'. However, for women, the effects are adverse to that of men, and none of the health coefficients for women is significant. Hence - at least for men - re-migration can be seen as an additional explanation for the HIE

The Asset Portfolios of Native-Born and Foreign-Born Households

This paper analyses the net worth and asset portfolios of native- and foreign-born Australian families using HILDA (wave 2) data. Specifically, we estimate a system of asset equations with an adding-up constraint imposed to control for variation in households' total net worth. Our results indicate that after accounting for differences in human capital and income levels, single immigrants have a wealth advantage of almost $185,000 relative to single native-born individuals. Although the wealth gap between mixed and native-born couples is not statistically significant, immigrant-only couples have approximately$150,000 less wealth on average than native-born couples. Relative to equally wealthy native-born couples, immigrant-only couples hold substantially more of their wealth in their homes and less in the form of vehicles and financial assets. Mixed couples, on the other hand, allocate their wealth across assets in the same way as native-born couples

A Comparative Analysis of the Nativity Wealth Gap

This paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth position of immigrant households residing in Australia, Germany and the United States. Our results indicate that in Germany and the United States wealth differentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations, while income differentials are relatively unimportant in understanding the nativity wealth gap. In contrast, the relatively small wealth gap between Australian- and foreign- born households exists because immigrants to Australia do not translate their relative educational and demographic advantage into a wealth advantage. On balance, our results point to substantial cross-national disparity in the economic well-being of immigrant and native families, which is largely consistent with domestic labor markets and the selection policies used to shape the nature of the immigration flow