Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14784
Authors: Paola Giuliano; Marco Tabellini
Abstract: We study the long run effects of immigration on US political ideology. We establish a new result: historical European immigration is associated with stronger preferences for redistribution and a more liberal ideology among Americans today. We hypothesize that European immigrants moving to the US in the early twentieth century brought with them their preferences for redistribution, with long-lasting effects on political attitudes of US-born individuals. After documenting that immigrants' economic characteristics and other standard economic forces cannot, alone, explain our results, we provide evidence that our findings are driven by immigrants with a longer exposure to social-welfare reforms in their countries of origin. Consistent with a process of horizontal transmission from immigrants to natives, results are stronger where historical inter-group contact was more frequent, and are not due to transmission within ancestry groups. Immigration left its footprint on American political ideology starting with the New Deal, and persisted since then.
Keywords: immigration; preferences for redistribution; political ideology; cultural transmission
JEL Codes: D64; D72; H2; J15; N32; Z1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Historical European immigration (N33) | Stronger preferences for redistribution (D63) |
| Historical European immigration (N33) | More liberal ideology (P16) |
| Historical immigration (K37) | Horizontal transmission of political preferences (D72) |
| Longer exposure to social welfare reforms (I38) | Stronger preferences for redistribution (D63) |
| Longer exposure to social welfare reforms (I38) | More liberal ideology (P16) |
| Frequent historical intergroup contact (F55) | Stronger preferences for redistribution (D63) |
| Frequent historical intergroup contact (F55) | More liberal ideology (P16) |