Abstract
In this paper, we re-examine the role of economic self-interest in shaping people’s attitudes towards immigration, using data from the European Social Survey 2002/2003. Compared to the existing literature, there are two main contributions of the present paper. First, we develop a more powerful test of the hypothesis that a positive relationship between education and attitudes towards immigration reflects economic self-interest in the labour market. Second, we develop an alternative and more direct test of whether economic self-interest matters for people’s attitudes towards immigration. We find that while the "original" relationship between education and attitudes found in the literature is unlikely to reflect economic self-interest, there is considerable evidence of economic self-interest when using the more direct test
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Bonn |
| Publisher | Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Publication status | Published - 2006 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- attitudes
- immigration
- economic self-interest
