Ethnic Enclaves and the Economic Success of Immigrants – Evidence from a Natural Experiment, Quarterly：（民族聚居和移民的经济上的成功u2014u2014从一个自然实验证据,季度）.pdfVIP

ETHNIC ENCLAVES AND THE ECONOMIC SUCCESS OF IMMIGRANTS—EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT* PER-ANDERS EDIN PETER FREDRIKSSON OLOF ÅSLUND Recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic “enclaves” within metropolitan areas. The economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue. We use data from an immigrant policy initiative in Sweden , when govern - ment authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way that we argue is exogenous . This policy initiative provides a unique natural experiment, which allows us to estimate the causal effect on labor market outcomes of living in enclaves . We nd substantive evidence of sorting across locations. When sorting is taken into account, living in enclaves improves labor market outcomes for less skilled immigrants: the earnings gain associated with a standard deviation in- crease in ethnic concentration is 13 percent . Furthermore, the quality of the enclave seems to matter. Members of high-income ethnic groups gain more from living in an enclave than members of low-income ethnic groups. I. INTRODUCTION In most countries, immigrants tend to be spatially concen- trated [Stark 1991]. This is particularly true for the United States, where almost three-quarters of immigrants resided in only six states in 1998; see Borjas [1999]. It is also true for Sweden, where the share of the foreign-born population living in the three largest metropolitan areas outstripped the share of the native population by 18 percentage points in 1997. In this paper we are concerned with the labor market consequences