International Migration, Population Change and the Labour Force, 1991-1996: An Overview (original) (raw)

International Migration and Population Change in the 1990s: A New Regime?

Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand

Late in 1994 the Government announced a review of immigration policy, especially the operation of the points system which was introduced in November 1991. International migration has increased rapidly since the Immigration Policy Review in 1986, and there have been net migration gains to New Zealand's population in every year since 31 March 1990. During 1994 numbers of prospective immigrants admitted under the points system exceeded 40,000. There is an expectation that the net migration gain for the year ending 31 March 1995 could reach 30,000. This is approaching the peak annual net gains of the early 1990s. Given that there will be considerable debate about immigration if such a high net gain is recorded, it seemed appropriate to assess more closely the impact which international migration in the 1990s has had on the size and age composition of New Zealand's population. This paper presents some summary findings from this analysis with particular reference to the period 1 A...

The impact of immigration on the labour market outcomes of New Zealanders

This paper uses data from the 1996, 2001 and 2006 New Zealand Census to examine how the supply of immigrants in particular skill-groups affects the employment and wages of the New Zealand-born and of earlier migrants. We first estimate simple CES production functions that allow for substitutability between workers from different skillgroups, but assume that, within skill-groups, migrants are perfect substitutes for nonmigrants. We next estimate hierarchical CES production functions that allow for substitutability between immigrant and non-immigrant workers within skillgroups, but constrain the patterns of wage impacts on different factors in response to changing factor shares, and that natives and migrants are not substitutable across skill-groups. Then, we extend the previous literature by estimating a Generalised Leontief production function that allows for a less restrictive relationship between changes in factors shares and changes in wages within a particular level of the production function and for substitution and complementarity between immigrant and nonimmigrant workers both between and across skill-groups. Regardless of the model being estimated, we find little evidence that immigrants negatively affect either the wages or employment opportunities of the average New Zealandborn worker. However, we find some evidence that increases in the number of high-skilled recent migrants have small negative impacts on the wages of high-skilled New Zealand-born workers, which are offset by small positive impacts on the wages of medium-skilled New Zealanders.

Immigrants in New Zealand: a study of their labour market outcomes

Occasional Paper, 1998

This occasional paper studies the labour market outcomes of New Zealand's overseasborn population, using individual record data from the 1981, 1986 and 1996 Population Censuses. It focuses on a period in which the foreign-born share of the working-age population increased from 16 to 19 percent and Asia became the major region-of-origin for new arrivals. After providing a descriptive profile of New Zealand's immigrants, the paper uses regression analysis to compare the incomes, participation rates and employment rates of immigrants with those of similar New Zealand-born individuals, shortly after arrival and in subsequent years. Moreover, the paper identifies the factors that are associated with relatively good and relatively poor outcomes.

Immigration futures: New Zealand in a global context

2006

At no other time in the past century has there been such focused and intense global interest in international migration. Never before has there been such interest, internationally, in how Australia, Canada and New Zealand manage their international migration. These countries have become models for governments elsewhere who are seeking to develop policy that has a more direct impact on the quality of the population flows into their countries. New Zealand is unusual by OECD standards in that it has a high level of emigration of citizens at the same time that it has a very high per capita rate of immigration. New Zealand’s contemporary migration flows are examined briefly and it is demonstrated that the system is not nearly as dominated by migration from countries in northeast Asia as it was a decade ago. A more flexible approach to the attainment of permits to reside in a country is being adopted in most countries now. The prospective migrants take the opportunity to assess employment...

The Impact of Immigration on the Geographic Mobility of New Zealanders

Motu working paper, 2007

This paper uses data from the New Zealand Census to examine how the supply of recent migrants in particular skill groups affects the geographic mobility of the New Zealand-born and earlier migrants. We identify the impact of recent migration on mobility using the 'area-analysis' approach, which exploits the fact that immigration is spatially concentrated, and thus a change in the local supply of migrants in a particular skill group should have an impact on the mobility of similarly skilled nonmigrants in that local labour market. Overall, our results provide little support for the hypothesis that migrant inflows displace either the NZ-born or earlier migrants with similar skills in the areas that new migrants are settling. If anything, they suggest that there are positive spillovers between recent migrants and other individuals that encourage individuals to move to or remain in the areas in which similarly skilled migrants are settling. Thus, it appears unlikely that internal mobility moderates any potential impacts of immigration on labour or housing markets in New Zealand.

Trade, diaspora and migration to New Zealand

2009

NZIER has always had a strong interest in understanding the way in which the New Zealand economy interacts with the rest of the world. We have a long history of producing research into trade liberalisation and globalisation.

Demographic Change and New Zealand�s Economic Growth

2003

A b s t r a c t New Zealand has, by OECD standards, high birth rates. This has provided New Zealand with a relatively young population and continuing labour force growth. Both these features are, on many accounts, good for economic growth. Yet most discussions of New Zealand's economic performance and its prospects for moving up the OECD income distribution have paid little attention to demography. This paper defines "demography" narrowly as population size, growth, and age-structure, and examines the likely effects on New Zealand's growth rate in GDP per capita, relative to the rest of the OECD. The first part of the paper gives a broad overview of trends in population size and age structure in New Zealand and elsewhere in the OECD. The second part describes selected demographic trends in more detail and discusses their economic significance. The overall conclusion is future demographic trends are likely to provide New Zealand with a small advantage, relative to the rest of the OECD.