Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early 20 th Century

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1 Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early 20 th Century Edward Kosack Department of Economics University of Colorado at Boulder Zachary Ward Department of Economics University of Colorado at Boulder August 2013* Abstract: We explore the self-selection of Mexican migrants to the United States in We hand-collect data for migrants from manifest lists for towns along the United States-Mexico border. Officials recorded the heights of migrants, a measure that we use to proxy migrant quality and measure self-selection into migration. Migrants, despite being relatively more unskilled than stayers, came from the middle to upper portion of the height distribution in Mexico, and so were positively selected. The result holds within skill group, suggesting that the United States received the best unskilled, skilled and professional workers. JEL Classification: J61, J24, N0, N36 Keywords: Mexico, early twentieth century migration, self-selection, height *We would like to thank Ann Carlos for her guidance and encouragement in this project. We would also like to thank Lee Alston, Francisca Antman, Brian Cadena, Michael Greenwood, Frank Lewis, Jason Long, and Carol Shiue for helpful comments. We would also like to thank participants at the annual meetings of the Economics and Business Historical Society, Western Economic Association International and the Canadian Network for Economic History. All errors are our own. 1

2 Introduction Through the beginning of the twentieth century, Europeans dominated migrant flows to the United States. Federal immigration policy was primarily concerned with limiting migration from Southern and Eastern Europe, while largely ignoring the increasing number of Mexicans crossing the border. The era of free mass migration of Europeans ended abruptly with the Immigration Acts of 1921 and These Acts imposed quotas to curtail European migration to the United States, but migration from Mexico remained relatively unrestricted. 1 More individuals from Mexico arrived in the United States during the 1920s than did migrants from Ireland, Germany, Greece, Spain and other European countries (Figure 1). Mexican migrants became an increasingly important source of labor in the United States in the early twentieth century, yet little is known about those who decided to migrate. This paper examines a simple, yet fundamental issue, asking whether Mexican migrants in the early twentieth century were positively or negatively selected from the home population. Only a select few are willing to cross borders and leave their native land (Borjas 1987), and the economic consequences of the quality of migrants relative to those who remain behind affect the home and host economies through multiple channels. The specific pattern of selection affects the return to migration (Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson, 2012a) and migrant assimilation (Chiswick, 1978; Borjas, 1985; Ferrie, 1999). For Mexico, whether those leaving were of higher or lower quality than those staying is important for understanding potential brain drain and how migration affects the course of Mexican economic development (Gibson and McKenzie, 2010), as well as income inequality (McKenzie and Rapoport, 2007). Given the persistence of 1 The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924 placed annual quota limits on European countries while imposing no restrictions on Western Hemisphere countries. In the years prior to World War I, about one million immigrants entered the country every year. The quotas eventually imposed a 150,000 person limit on European immigration in While Mexican migrants were not limited by quotas, the Immigration Act of 1917 did require all migrants to pass a literacy test. 2

3 migrant networks, historical migration from Mexico strongly influences current migration patterns (Woodruff and Zenteno, 2007), and a better understanding of who came nearly a century ago improves our understanding of the origin of these networks. Measuring self-selection is difficult, especially in an historical setting. If migrants are positively selected, they would earn more in the source country than stayers; however, migrants are only observed in the host country. Since prices for skills differ across economies, one needs to generate counterfactual earnings for migrants if they remained at home. Researchers that overcome the first-order problem of having quality data in both home and host countries use various econometric methods to estimate self-selection, including propensity score matching (Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005) and sibling fixed effects (Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson, 2012a). We employ a straightforward metric to estimate quality differences between movers and stayers. We compare their height distributions. A long literature argues that height proxies for higher earnings, higher intelligence, and higher skills (Steckel, 1995; Steckel, 2009). Height is especially suited to compare migrants and stayers because it is fixed by early adulthood and does not change by moving across borders, unlike wages or occupation. Also, in an historical setting height data is often more readily available than wage data. Height is particularly useful because it is a detailed, individual measure to estimate self-selection within skill group. In their studies of historical selection, Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (2012a, 2012b) and Collins and Wanamaker (forthcoming) rely on occupational scores that assign the same earnings to all in a given occupation. They assign individuals aggregated occupational earnings due to the lack of individual wage data. However, migrants could be the better laborers, the better miners, or the better farmers and using height allows us to examine selection at this finer level of detail. 3

4 Finally, height as a measure solves a problem when comparing Mexican movers to stayers; namely, very little variation in occupation. 87% of the Mexicans in our migrant sample are unskilled. We find that using only skill classifications would lead one to naively conclude that Mexican migrants were negatively self-selected. By altering the metric, however, we find that Mexican migrants were positively selected and that the United States received the very best of the unskilled workers. For this paper, we hand-collect data from border manifests for migrants crossing through border towns in Arizona and Texas. Information about each migrant at the time of crossing, including height, was recorded by border officials. Only by hand-collecting the data can we get the appropriate, individual-level detail for this analysis. We use this dataset to compare heights for migrants to samples of heights for soldiers in the military and those who applied for passports, collected by López-Alonso and publicly available at the ICPSR (2003). We collect manifests for migrants crossing the land border into the United States in Thus, we examine selection processes for Mexican migrants during an era of relatively few legal barriers to entry, yet after the installation of border stations in 1909, after the most intense fighting of the Mexican Revolution, and prior to the quota legislation of Such an analysis is not possible in any later year when estimates would be confounded by institutional factors coming from a complex immigration policy. In this paper, we compare the heights of Mexican migrants with the heights of two reference groups in Mexico. First, we estimate height densities for our migrant sample, as well as for the sample of those in the Mexican military and the sample of those applying for Mexican passports. Second, we estimate separate OLS regressions to compare average height in the migrant sample to average height in the military sample as well as to average height in the 4

5 passport sample. The regression framework allows us to control for factors that could potentially confound the estimates, such as age, state of birth, and decade of birth. Similarly, it allows us to control for skill and measure selection within skill group. We find that Mexican migrants in 1920 were positively self-selected from the Mexican population. They were four to five centimeters taller than soldiers in the military. They were only one and a half centimeters shorter than passport holders, members of the high class who applied for passports for business or leisure travel (López-Alonso and Condey, 2003). This result holds within occupational skill class as the United States received the tallest laborers, the tallest semi-skilled, and the tallest professionals. We find this positive selection is a result of economic forces and not institutional constraints imposed by complex migration policy. The highest quality and most productive were attracted to the United States, draining Mexico of the physically strongest and those with the highest levels of human capital. This result is consistent with Borjas (1987) where high costs of travel or credit constraints prohibited poorer individuals from migrating. The result is robust to regional distortions resulting from lingering unrest from the Revolution in the North, to the institutional barriers presented by the literacy requirement in the 1917 legislation, and to concerns about undocumented migration. U.S. Mexico Migration in 1920 Mexico and the United States have had close ties for the past two centuries. There is an extensive literature on the history of migration between the two countries, too expansive to cover in limited space (see Cardoso (1980), Ettinger (2009), and Gutierrez (1995) for an overview). By 1920, the year our study takes place, thousands of Mexicans traveled northward yearly to earn higher wages offered by southwestern farms, railroads and mines (Clark, 1908; Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1920). Indeed, Mexican migration patterns 5

6 transformed dramatically during the early twentieth century. The Mexican Revolution pushed out migrants during the 1910s, and the quotas curtailed unskilled labor from Eastern and Southern Europe in the 1920s, pulling Mexican labor into the United States. We use 1920 as a benchmark year, falling as it does directly between these two major events, to reveal how the self-selection process operated with limited confounding institutional factors. The Mexican Revolution, a multi-sided conflict, raged during the early 1910s but the major fighting had subsided by At the beginning of the Revolution, skirmishes occurred in both northern and southern parts of Mexico as revolutionaries from different states fought to overthrow longtime President Díaz. Some of the heaviest battles were fought between 1913 and 1915 as the revolutionaries clashed for the Presidency of Mexico. After the creation of the constitution of Mexico in 1917, major warfare subsided with only Pancho Villa skirmishing in small battles in the North. In 1920 all fighting halted as Villa surrendered and Álvaro Obregón was elected to the presidency (Knight, 1986). Thousands of Mexicans fled to the United States during the Revolution temporarily (Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1914), but the United States, going through a production and industry ramp-up for World War I, absorbed these migrants easily (Rockoff, 2005). In fact, in 1917 the United States encouraged temporary Mexican migrants to work in agriculture, railroads, and mining by briefly suspending entry restrictions and allowing contract laborers, discontinuing the head tax, and waiving the literacy requirement (Cardenas, 1975). By 1920, many of these migrants had returned home, although some did remain in the United States after their employment ended (Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1920). United States immigration policy did not focus on Mexico. Rather, Congress aimed to severely curtail European migrants by passing the first quota law in 1921 (Zeidel, 2005). In the 2 See Knight (1986) for a review of the Mexican Revolution. 6

7 early twentieth century, resentment and resistance to European migration exploded as Eastern and Southern Europeans came by the millions and radically transformed parts of the country (Goldin, 1994). Prior to the quota laws, Congress passed qualitative restrictions in 1917 by requiring migrants to be able to read to and write in their own language. Soon after passing the literacy test, Congress quantitatively limited immigration by enacting the quota laws in 1921 and 1924, dramatically reducing migration from Europe. In the fiscal year prior to the 1921 quota, total immigration to the United States was 805,228, which fell sharply to 309,556 the following year (Carter et al., 2006). 3 The quota system, however, placed no limits on migrants coming from the Western Hemisphere, and so Mexican migration was relatively unimpeded. Following the quotas, Mexican immigration increased dramatically as Mexicans acquired jobs due to a labor shortfall (Bloch, 1929). The large increase in numbers would eventually lead to concerns over racial origins of Mexican migrants (Foerster, 1925), the creation of the Mexican Border Patrol and the criminalization of undocumented entry in 1929 (Ngai, 2002). While there were some restrictions to entering the country in 1920, picking a year prior leads to several challenges for our analysis. First, the Mexican Revolution fighting was heaviest between 1910 and 1917, making it difficult to separate migrants moving for economic reasons versus those involuntarily fleeing as refugees. Although some small amount of fighting continued in 1920, it was limited to the North while most of our sample comes from central Mexico. Second, the United States only started to systematically collect immigrant records for individuals crossing the Mexican border in 1907, and the process was not settled by 1909, the year before the Mexican Revolution (Immigration Act of 1907, Sec. 32). For example, two of 3 The 1921 quota limited the yearly flow to be 3% of the foreign-born from that country living in the United States based on the 1910 Census. Official statistics measure immigration not on a calendar year but based on fiscal years, from July to next year s June. 7

8 the four stations in our sample do not have data for all of 1909, as records for El Paso begin in May 1909, and those for Ajo start in Selection into Migration Migrants are not a random draw from their home country s population. While many have observed that migrants are somehow different from those who stay in the home country, Borjas (1987) first argued that we can predict the direction of self-selection for migrants based on the relative distribution of wages across economies. If human capital is rewarded more (less) in the United States compared to the home country, then people with more human capital are more (less) likely to migrate. If the migrants who leave from the home country are on average better (e.g., more motivated, more educated, higher wages, etc.) than those who stay, then the selfselection is positive; if migrants are worse than stayers (e.g., less wealth, less skills, etc.), selfselection is negative. Generally, a migrant moves if the benefits outweigh the costs, as described in Equation (1). ( ) ( ) (1) Here are wages in the United States, are wages in Mexico, and are the costs of migration (transportation, psychological, opportunity costs, etc.). 5 The ratio of United States wages to Mexican wages ( ) differs across the distribution of human capital in Mexico. We theorize that the wage ratio is higher for unskilled workers as base wages are higher in the United States, but the ratio decreases as individuals gain more human capital since the return to 4 See the National Archives publication numbers A3412 and A3377 for the data sources on El Paso and Ajo respectively. 5 See Armstrong and Lewis (2012) for a model of migration based on capital constraints applied to Canadian immigration during this time period. 8

9 education is higher in Mexico. 6 Recent papers focus on how differs across the population and could affect the self-selection of migrants. Chiquiar and Hanson (2005) show high costs of migration can keep out those with low human capital, changing a pattern of negative selfselection to intermediate or positive self-selection. Having stronger networks can lower costs of migration, thus affecting self-selection (McKenzie and Rapoport, 2010). Moraga (2011) suggests that the costs of migration could determine why we see negative selection into recent migration from urban areas of Mexico where it is easier to travel to the United States and positive self-selection from rural areas of Mexico. Equation (1) generates predictions relevant for the early twentieth century. Costs of migration, especially transportation costs, were considerable for Mexican migrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Improvements in transportation from central Mexico to the United States border, especially the completion of the Mexican railroad in the late nineteenth century, lowered the time cost of migration and spurred large waves of emigration from Mexico to the United States (Coatsworth, 1981). However, the cost of a ticket from central Mexico to the United States border was approximately $12.50, which was a non-trivial sum for poorer but industrious peasants within Mexico (Clark, 1908, pg. 473). Since the costs of migration influence the selection of migrants, the United States can manipulate these costs as a policy tool to encourage the migration of only the best workers. Indeed, through the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the United States attempted many times to influence the quality of migrants, adding restrictions and imposing costs to keep out the less skilled. For example, the Immigration Act of 1917 both 6 The assumption for unskilled wages is consistent with Clark (1908). Others assume that the ratio increases for contemporary Mexico (Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005; McKenzie and Rapoport, 2010), given that human capital is scarcer in Mexico. This likely holds for 1920, especially with the extreme inequality reported by Lopez-Alonso (2007). 9

10 required that migrants demonstrate literacy and increased the head tax from four dollars to eight dollars. Economists have used multiple metrics to measure how migrants differ from those who remain in the home country. Abramitzky et al. (2012b) compare occupations of movers and stayers and find that cohort quality from drops as migrants become more negatively selected, consistent with Hatton and Williamson s (2006) argument that self-selection declines over time based on broad occupational classes. Stolz and Baten (2012) use age heaping techniques as a measure of human capital to show how European migrants differed in numeracy skills from those who remained behind. 7 While these papers analyze the selection of migrants from Europe, little is known about the selection during the early decades of Mexican migration to the United States. Feliciano (2001) is the only paper to our knowledge that explores the historical selection of Mexican migrants. She compares the literacy of Mexicans as recorded in the United States Census and Mexican Census and finds that in 1910 the Mexicans in the United States had a higher literacy rate than individuals in Mexico. Furthermore, she finds that the relative skill advantage of Mexican migrants over stayers decreased over the twentieth century. Multiple metrics of selection have been used: income, skill class, occupational ranking, age heaping, years of education and literacy. While each of these metrics provides more insight into the selection of migrants, they are not available for our sample of migrants because of a lack of data on wages and education level. Using occupational measures is not useful because there is little variation in occupation for Mexicans as an overwhelming percentage listed their occupation as laborer. Therefore, we employ a different metric that has a long tradition for economists, using height to measure the quality of an individual migrant. 7 Age heaping is based on the observation that many people do not know their actual age but round to the nearest 0 or 5 when reporting it. A Hearn et al. develop a measure (called ABCC) that is the percent of the population that knows their true age (A Hearn, Baten, and Crayen, 2009). 10

11 Height as a Measure of Selection Due to a lack of reliable national accounting before the 1930s, economists have relied on other measures to proxy for standard of living. In particular, height as a measure has been used since it is positively correlated with income and improved health and nutrition (See Steckel, (2009) for a review of height studies). Higher living standards with ample food during childhood increase height, while poor nutrition and health can stunt growth. Adult height is reached by the age of 24 and is not influenced by contemporaneous living standards, so heights recorded years later can be used to estimate economic conditions of the past. Furthermore, comparing heights from different subpopulations shows how resources are allocated and can proxy for inequality within a society (Steckel, 1995; Steckel, 2009). Many studies have used military, passport, and prison records to estimate growth trends over time, but we use heights recorded in immigration records. Not only does the average height of a society indicate overall health and well-being, but taller people earn more than their shorter counterparts within a country. For example, Schultz (2002) shows that the return to a one centimeter increase in height is comparable to an additional year of schooling. In developing countries, height is a determinant of wages since larger and stronger men (as measured by BMI) are rewarded in the labor market (Thomas and Strauss, 1997). The return to physical strength is especially important in developing countries where large sectors of the economy rely on the physical productivity of labor. Mexican migrants worked in labor-intensive jobs, such as mining, railroad construction, and farm labor, where improved physiology could lead to higher productivity (Clark, 1908; Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1920). 11

12 Persico et al. (2004) argue higher wages for taller individuals are due to non-cognitive characteristics (e.g., confidence), while others (Case and Paxson, 2008; Schick and Steckel, 2010) argue that early childhood inputs into health and nutrition can increase the cognitive functioning of an individual later in life. Taller individuals are more likely to remember their exact date of birth (Humphries and Leunig, 2009). Taller individuals score higher on early childhood cognitive and non-cognitive tests (Case and Paxson, 2008). The return to physical strength explains much of the wage premium for stature in developing countries, and increased cognitive functioning can explain why even in developed countries taller individuals earn more (Steckel, 2009). Either way, it has been found that those of larger stature are of a higher quality, both in terms of health and in terms of productivity. If the migrants who arrived in the United States were taller than those who remained in Mexico, that would indicate a pattern of positive selection for Mexican migrants. Data Border Crossing Manifests In order to understand exactly who migrated to the United States from Mexico in 1920, we construct a unique dataset of individual migrant characteristics. Specifically, we hand-collect individual observations from manifest lists for those crossing the border from Mexico into the United States through the towns of Ajo Arizona, Douglas Arizona, Brownsville Texas, and El Paso Texas in We show the locations of the border crossing stations in Figure 2. As a result of the Immigration Act of 1917 with its head tax and literacy requirements for all migrants, officials were required to maintain extensive records (Ettinger, 2009). Thus, we are able to access these detailed manifest lists, available on microfilm from the National Archives of the 8 As the map shows, these towns are well-distributed along the border. Furthermore, there is no systematic difference in the outcome of interest (height) across border towns after controlling for state of birth and decadal fixed effects. 12

13 United States, to examine individual level decisions and outcomes. 9 We provide an example of a typical manifest in Figure 3. In addition to height, a wealth of information about migrants upon arrival is recorded on the manifest, including demographic (age, sex, marital status), geographic (place of birth, place of last residence, intended destination), economic (occupation, savings), and network (join a friend, relative or employer) data. While some studies use ship records arriving from the Atlantic to study immigration to the United States, we are unaware of any other study that uses these border manifests (Ferrie, 1999; Cohn, 2009; Bandiera, Rasul and Viarengo, 2013). We collect all available data for each adult male (18 years or older) classified as a permanent migrant. 10, The data include the individual s name, age, marital status, ability to read and write, language, occupation, nationality, race, last permanent residence, final destination, amount of money brought into the United States, whether or not they are joining someone upon arrival, place of birth and height. In total we have micro data for 3,671 male migrants. These data allow us to create a profile for the typical male migrant that crossed the border from Mexico to the United States in Male migrants to the United States were, on average, 29 years old, equally likely to be married as single, and almost universally literate. 11 We associate each migrant with a region of birth according to the same regional classification 9 We accessed the manifest lists for land border crossings from Mexico from both the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the National Archives in Denver and the genealogy website, Ancestry.com. 10 We employ a systematic approach to the collection of these data. First, we visually inspect each entry to determine whether or not the individual can be classified as a permanent immigrant (migrants could also stipulate a temporary stay in the United States). Only permanent immigration is considered here and so an observation was collected if and only if the individual's intended length of stay was listed as permanent or indefinite, the last permanent residence was outside of the United States, the place of birth was outside of the United States, and the final destination was within the United States. These are similar to the criteria used by the United States officials to classify each individual as a measureable immigrant on the form. 11 The majority of our sample is literate as a result of the literacy requirement in the Immigration Act of

14 used by López-Alonso and Condey (2003). 12 Immigrants most often came from central and northern Mexico, with very few coming from the southern states. 13 The majority of our sample came from the Bajio region in Mexico and reported a final destination of Texas. Finally, 86% of immigrants in the sample reported not meeting anyone (friend, relative or employer) upon their entry into the United States. The data include the amount of money carried across the border by each migrant, measured in dollars. On average each Mexican migrant brought $39 cash with them across the border, lower than non-mexican migrants arriving through the port of New Orleans in the same year who brought over $ Migrants from Mexico, however, probably did not need much cash on hand to cover their costs when they arrived, as most came from and settled in areas quite close to the border. These areas were close both in physical distance and in culture and networks developed to help with the assimilation process. Additionally, U.S. employers were eager to hire these migrants and so the time to finding a job was not long (Clark, 1908). We also collect data on the individual migrant s occupation. We follow López-Alonso s (2000) occupational classification in order to categorize a person as unskilled, skilled or professional, according to their listed occupation. Table A1 lists the occupations within each skill class. In terms of their occupational skill class, the majority of immigrants (87%) in the sample were unskilled. Indeed, most Mexicans, both movers and stayers, were unskilled. Due to 12 Region of birth is split into North, Bajio, Center, and South. North includes Baja California Sur, Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. Bajío includes Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, Durango, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Querétaro, and Guanajuato. Center includes Distrito Federal, México State, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Veracruz, and Hidalgo. The South includes Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and Chiapas. 13 It is well noted that the construction of the Mexican railroad helped transport Mexicans to the United States. However, the railroad did not reach the southern states below Veracruz by 1920, which explains why few of our observations are from the southern Mexican states. 14 This figure comes from similar work that we have done with passenger lists for boats arriving at New Orleans in

15 the lack of variation in skill class for migrants, occupational rankings yield little information in determining self-selection. One might naively conclude that migrants were negatively selected as the majority of them were unskilled. Height, however, allows us to know whether individuals, within a given occupational class, are positively or negatively self-selected into migration to the United States. In other words, did the U.S. get migrants from the upper or lower end of the quality distribution, conditional on occupational skill class? To answer this question we use individual migrant s height at the time they crossed the border. Height was recorded on each manifest by border officials and was rounded to the nearest quarter inch. The average immigrant was approximately 169 centimeters tall. Height is an individual measure that is ideal for measuring the degree of self-selection into migration. Of course, in order to determine whether migrants from Mexico were positively or negatively selected, we require reference groups of individuals remaining in Mexico against which to compare these migrant heights as we discuss below. Our dataset is constructed from information collected by border officials as individuals crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. Therefore, our sample of immigrants contains only those who crossed legally in the sense that they came through an official border crossing station and not those who may have crossed at other points along the border. At this point in history, there were minimal restrictions on the migration of people from Mexico to the United States. Most efforts were aimed at curtailing immigration of undesirable individuals from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe (Ettinger, 2009). The only two elements of migration policy that served as obstacles to documented Mexican migration were the eight dollar head tax and the literacy requirement, which was enacted in the immigration legislation of 1917 (Ettinger, 2009). Thus, those who were trying to avoid either the head tax or the literacy requirement are 15

16 the only people who had any incentive to cross the border at places other than official border stations. The geography and climate of the border area made crossing at places other than through official border stations difficult (Ettinger, 2009). Although Bloch (1929), in a comparison of census numbers with net migration flows, estimates that these numbers could have been substantial for the decade from 1910 to 1920, he also admits that there is a lack of reliable information which would make study of this population feasible. 15 Therefore, we wish to be clear that our results apply to those migrants who crossed through official border crossing stations, and not necessarily to all migrants (i.e., those that crossed without going through an official crossing station). 16 To determine the representativeness of our migrant sample, we compare their characteristics with similar migrants recorded in the 1920 census. We use the 1% 1920 IPUMS sample to identify migrants who arrive in the previous year, who are literate, who are over the age of 18, and who are male (Ruggles et al., 2010). There are 148 Mexican migrants who meet these characteristics. The third column of Table 1 reports the difference between the migrant and census samples. Estimating the self-selection of migrants is based on comparing skills of movers to stayers, so if our sample is unrepresentative of Mexican migrants in terms of skills then we would incorrectly infer the pattern of self-selection for Mexico as a whole. We confirm in column 3 that, in general, there is no statistically or economically significant difference in skill 15 Bloch (1929) compares the change in the number of Mexican individuals from the 1910 to the 1920 Census with net migration flows (i.e., immigration flows minus emigration flows) to estimate that over 111,000 entered the country without documentation from Mexico over the course of the decade. In his own study of Mexican migration, however, he admits that reliable figures for these individuals do not exist and he must concentrate his own analysis on those who crossed through official stations such that they are included in the official immigration statistics. 16 We recognize that those crossing as undocumented migrants could differ from those crossing at official border stations and that the self-selection for these individuals could be different. In particular, they might be negatively selected. We conduct a robustness check to test the sensitivity of our results to undocumented migration and find that the result holds, even for extremely negative selection of undocumented migrants. 16

17 between our sample and those recorded in the census. While there is also no difference in marital status, our sample is about two years younger and overrepresented by people moving to Texas. 17 Comparison Samples: Military and Passport Data To make an inference about the selection of migrants from Mexico we need to compare the heights of migrants to people living within Mexico. Here we use two quite distinct samples military soldiers and passport holders. 18 López-Alonso (2003) collects heights of individuals in Mexico from military and passport records to analyze the anthropometric history of Mexico in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Secretaría Nacional de la Defensa houses federal military records in the Archivo de Concentración, recording deceased soldiers in the Sección de Personal Extinto and deserters in the Sección de Cancelados (López-Alonso and Condey, 2003). Birth records did not become widely available until the 1930s, so the military kept track of members (who might potentially desert) by recording their height, place of birth, age and occupation. The Sección de Cancelados contains information on members of the military who deserted the army before their service time ended, and the Sección de Personal Extinto contains individuals who died in service or retired and then died afterwards (López-Alonso, 2012). The majority of the military data is for individuals who joined the Mexican Army between 1915 and Since the military did not have required service until 1939, only those who made the choice to join the military appear in the data, thus it is not representative of the entire Mexican population. López-Alonso (2007) 17 The fact that our sample is overrepresented by people headed to Texas is an artifact of the majority of it being recorded from the El Paso and Brownsville border stations. 18 Bodenhorn et al. (2013) warn that samples of historical heights are likely selected. We take advantage of having two comparison samples (military and passport data) to infer the selection into migration % of the military sample is recorded between 1915 and

18 argues that the federal military represents the lower middle class of a highly unequal Mexican society. We also compare migrants to a sample of passport applications from Mexico. We use passport applications between 1910 and 1935, collected from the Archivo de Pasaportes (Lopez- Alonso and Condey, 2003). Height was not measured for passports, but was self-reported, possibly creating an upward bias since height tends to be over-reported (Spencer et al., 2002). If Mexican migrants are positively selected, the tendency to over-report on passport applications would bias us against finding this result. Those holding passports did so for business and leisure and this group reflects an underlying population that had the funds to afford traveling. The characteristics of the military and passport sample are presented in Table 2. Comparing the migrant sample to these two reference samples allows us to make some preliminary observations about the type of self-selection into migration from Mexico to the United States. Approximately 77 percent of the military came from the unskilled labor class, while 21 percent came from the skilled labor class. At first glance, the military sample appears to be higher skilled than the migrant group since 87 percent of migrants were unskilled, implying negative self-selection. However the lack of variation in listed occupation on the manifests makes this a poor measure of self-selection. A comparison with average height in the migrant sample reveals that migrants were approximately five centimeters taller than those in the military. Utilizing height as a measure of selection suggests that migrants were more positively selected from the home distribution than those in the military. Turning to the passport sample, these individuals were at best only about one and a half centimeters taller than those immigrating to the United States. While the migrant sample was over four centimeters taller than the military, the migrant and passport groups are very similar in terms of their height. Unfortunately, we do 18

19 not have precise geographic or occupational classifications for the passport sample, but one would expect that those with the funds to travel outside the United States were of a high occupational class. Thus, migrants are closer in height to the upper-income passport holders than to lower-income military personnel. The descriptive statistics for these samples suggest that migrants were positively self-selected from the home distribution. Estimation and Results We estimate the selection of migrants using two methods. The first uses nonparametric techniques to estimate the distributions of heights for each of the migrant, military and passport samples. A visual inspection of the distributions gives a clear indication of the self-selection of migrants. The estimated height distributions for migrants and military personnel are shown in Figure 4, displaying that migrants are much taller than those in the military. In addition, there is no evidence of truncation in the military distribution from a minimum height requirement. Looking solely at occupational skill classification, one could argue that migrants were negatively selected since migrants were more unskilled than the military. However, the height distribution shows evidence for positive selection of Mexican migrants relative to the military population. Migrants must have had a higher standard of living and better childhood environment than those who entered the military (Steckel, 2009). We compare the height distributions for migrants and passport applicants in Figure 5. The migrant height density is only slightly to the left of that for passport holders, and so migrants are only slightly shorter than passport holders. This is surprising since one would assume that passport holders were largely from skilled and professional classes. This result is again consistent with Mexican migrants being positively selected from the Mexican population. 19

20 However, these densities do not control for location of birth, or decade of birth, possible factors that influence final height. We utilize a linear regression model to explore the pattern of selection among Mexican migrants in 1920, as measured by migrant height. Although the analysis of the estimated densities suggests a pattern of positive selection among these immigrants, it is possible that greater stature is simply correlated with other characteristics that are more prevalent among the migrant sample. Thus, we estimate Equation (2) to control for many of these additional characteristics that could confound our positive selection result. (2) An individual s height is regressed on a constant, an indicator variable for whether or not the individual is from the migrant sample, and a vector of controls. In the vector of controls, we include dummy variables for age bins of 18 to 20 years and years in order to account for patterns in human growth rates. 20 We also include controls for decade of birth to account for any conditions that may have affected the height of all those born in Mexico during those times. 21 Furthermore, we include geographic controls to account for any spatial pattern in Mexican heights. 22 Finally, we include controls for occupational skill class which allows us to describe the selection of individuals within skill class. We give the results of the selection regressions comparing the sample of male migrants to the sample of males in the Mexican military in Table 3. Column (1) is a basic comparison of means. Columns (2) through (4) systematically add controls to the regression. First, our 20 Final adult height may not be reached until 24 years of age and so individuals that are between 18 and 24 years might still be growing. The results are qualitatively similar in regressions that exclude those under 24 years of age. 21 Results are robust to the inclusion of birth year fixed effects. 22 For example, those born in the Northern region tend to be taller as a result of a diet higher in protein than in other regions. 20

21 regression models reveal patterns in heights that are consistent with a priori predictions. Adults in the 18 to 20 year age bin are much shorter than adults over 24 years old, while those in the 21 to 23 year age bin are only slightly shorter and the difference loses statistical significance. This is consistent with the growth pattern of humans where heights increase at a decreasing rate up to around age 24. Those in the skilled class are taller than those in the unskilled class, while those in the professional class are taller than individuals in either of the other two occupational skill classes. This is consistent with the claim that height is an anthropometric measure that is correlated with income, standard of living, productivity and cognitive ability. Moreover, those born in the North region are significantly taller than those in other regions, consistent with a diet richer in protein which leads to taller individuals (Steckel, 2009). Second, the result of positive selection as measured by height holds in each of these specifications, with the migrant sample measuring four to five centimeters taller than those individuals in the military sample. Migrants are taller than those in the military even though they report lower skilled occupations. Finally, we find that individuals are positively selected into migration within occupational skill class (see column (4)). Although the descriptive statistics show that those who chose to migrate tended to come from lower level occupations, we find that within class the individuals who migrated tended to be taller than those who were in the military. We present the results of selection regressions comparing the sample of male migrants to the sample of males holding Mexican passports in Table 4. Column (1) again shows a simple regression that conducts a basic comparison of means, while column (2) includes controls for ages less than 24 years and decade of birth. 23 Again, we confirm the result from the simple comparison of height distributions. Those in the migrant sample are, on average, just under a 23 Fewer controls are included in this model simply because the passport sample lacks much of the detail found in the military sample. 21

22 centimeter and a half shorter than those in the passport sample. Given that the difference in height is quite small and the fact that those holding passports probably came from the upper end of the distribution in Mexican society, this is further evidence of a pattern of positive selection into Mexican migration in Robustness of the Results Literacy It is possible that Mexicans who crossed the border are taller than those who remained in Mexico since migrants needed to pass a literacy test after the Immigration Act of The literacy test required the migrant to read and write a paragraph of twenty five words in a language of their choosing, usually taken from the U.S. Constitution (Goldin, 1994). Literacy was not universal within Mexico during this time period, so a literacy test might exclude lower skilled Mexicans, resulting in positive selection. That is, the result of positive selection could simply be a product of the institutional controls imposed on migration by the literacy requirement in the 1917 law rather than high costs or capital constraints. A subsample of the 3,884 soldiers in the military data, military deserters, contains information on whether or not the individual was literate. By comparing literate migrants to literate military personnel, we can determine if the result of positive selection is driven solely by the literacy requirement. Of the 1,031 males within the deserter sample, 510 are literate (49.47%). Literacy in the military sample is determined by whether or not the soldier could sign their name (Lopez-Alonso, 2003). Since nearly 100% of males within the migrant sample are literate, we combine the migrants with the literate deserter sample to determine whether or not they were taller than literate individuals in the comparison group. Our results are presented in Table 5 and continue to show that migrants were taller than those within Mexico; indeed,

23 centimeters taller when controlling for age, decade and place of birth fixed effects. The result that migrants were taller, even within occupational skill class, also continues to hold. Thus, compared to a literate sample within Mexico, migrants were positively self-selected and our main result is not driven by institutional constraints stemming from the literacy requirement in the 1917 legislation. Place of Birth In our main specification, we control for region of birth and so the estimated coefficient on the migrant dummy is an average over the height difference for each of the four regions. If the North is highly-represented in the sample and if migrants from the North are abnormally selected because of continued fighting in the North, it is possible that the self-selection result is not due to economic forces but rather because of refugees fleeing the Mexican Revolution. In other words, the result may not be representative of Mexican migration in general, and may be driven by events in the North. Violence and skirmishes from the Mexican Revolution continued well after 1917 and into the 1920s in the northern parts of Mexico. Those born in the northern region of Mexico constitute a significant portion of our migrant sample (22%). We test for differences in the pattern of selection by region of birth to determine whether this should be of concern. We run the main specification with all controls, again comparing the migrant sample to the military sample, separately for each of the four regions of birth. We report the results of these estimations in Table 6. Positive self-selection is evident in each of the four birth regions as the coefficient on the migrant dummy is positive and significant in each case. The effect is greatest for those born in the southern parts of Mexico and smallest for those born in the Bajio region. Migrants born in the northern parts of Mexico are just over four centimeters taller than 23

24 non-migrants and do not exhibit an abnormal or extraordinary pattern of selection that would give cause for concern, as this is similar to the result found for the whole sample in the main specification. These results suggest that continued fighting in the North in 1920 does not present any challenge to our main conclusions. Undocumented Entry into the United States As noted above, legislation enacted in 1917 required migrants to the United States to pass a literacy test and to pay a head tax upon entry. Our results indicate that permanent, legal migrants to the United States in 1920 were positively self-selected from the home distribution. Those who could not afford the head tax or who could not pass a literacy test would have had an incentive to cross the border at places other than official border stations. If the undocumented entrants were negatively self-selected on height and were a larger group than documented migrants, it could mean that migrants as a whole were negatively self-selected. It is important to consider how sensitive our results are to including migrants who did not cross through official border stations. Bloch (1929) estimates that roughly 111,000 individuals entered the United States undocumented over the decade ending in The official migration statistics for the United States show that 219,004 individuals entered the country legally from Mexico from 1911 to Thus, the total flow from Mexico for the decade was 330,004, with undocumented entrants accounting for 33.6% and documented entrants accounting for 66.4% of that flow. Our simple comparison of means between the migrant sample and the military sample shows that legal migrants were, on average, 4.83 centimeters taller than those in the Mexican military. If we use a weighted average of documented and undocumented migrants to measure selection, we can calculate how short the average undocumented migrant would need to be to erase the

25 centimeter advantage over the military. The average undocumented entrant would need to be centimeters tall to cause the positive selection result to disappear completely and make migrants equal in stature to those in the military. This means the average undocumented entrant would have to be extremely negatively selected; indeed, over nine and half centimeters shorter than the average individual in the military and fourteen and a half centimeters shorter than documented migrants. This means that even though institutional constraints could cause negatively self-selected individuals to migrate unofficially, it is highly unlikely that this undocumented migration would result in a reversal of our positive selection for documented migrants. Conclusions Despite the prominence of self-selection in the migration literature, the literature is relatively silent as to whether in the early twentieth century Mexican migrants were better or worse than those they left behind. We hand-collect data from border crossing manifests, records that include migrant height. Height is a useful metric to compare quality of individuals because, unlike wages or occupation, it does not change when a migrant crosses the border. Furthermore, height provides useful variation within occupation that allows us to go further than other historical selection studies by estimating selection within an occupational class. The United States labor market drew the strongest and best workers from Mexico in the early twentieth century. Mexican migrants were over four centimeters taller than members of the Mexican military and only one and a half centimeters shorter than passport holders. Since the military drew from lower classes of Mexican society and the passport holders were elite, the fact that migrants were taller than those in the military and nearly as tall as passport holders tells us that they were positively selected from the Mexican population. Even within skill class, the 25

26 United States drew the best workers, an especially important result since there is little variation in occupation for Mexican migrants. This positive self-selection represents a quality drain from Mexico to the United States. Our results are robust to the literacy test as migrants are taller than literate soldiers in the military. The Mexican Revolution does not affect our pattern of selection since areas not experiencing conflict in 1920 still exhibit positive selection. The result is so strong that undocumented migration is unlikely to overturn it. We add to the growing literature on the self-selection of migrants historically, but shift the focus from Europe to Mexico, an increasingly important source of labor in the early twentieth century. While Europeans faced heavy institutional constraints after the imposition of quota laws in the early 1920s, Mexican labor migrated freely across the border, uninhibited by a limit on the total number of migrants. These results represent self-selection in an environment with relatively few barriers to entry. This is a question that cannot be addressed in any later year, given the complex immigration policy that was enacted in the years following The fact that Mexican migrants were positively self-selected is consistent with Borjas (1987) where migrants had high costs of travel or faced credit constraints, limiting the ability of lower quality Mexicans to migrate. A pattern of positive self-selection of Mexican migrants affects both Mexico and the United States in a variety of ways. The United States received the most productive Mexican workers, and these workers would assimilate into the labor market more quickly than negatively selected migrants. For Mexico, the best laborers, the best miners, and the best farmers left Mexico to work in the United States, draining Mexico of human capital and lowering the productivity of the average Mexican worker. However, the total effect on Mexican development is unclear as migration not only affects labor markets, but can influence home country savings 26

27 and investment by increasing remittances, by changing political institutions if migrants return back home, by increasing technological diffusion with the transmission of techniques or capital goods across borders, or by influencing future migration with the strengthening of networks. Determining the overall effect on Mexican development is challenging due to the variety of channels, but knowledge of the historical self-selection patterns in Mexico provides the first step to uncovering the multiple effects on the economies of both the United States and Mexico. 27

28 References Abramitzky, Ran, Leah Platt Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson. 2012a. Europe s Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses: Self-selection and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration. American Economic Review 102 (5): b. A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration. NBER Working Paper A'Hearn, Brian, Jörg Baten, and Dorothee Crayen Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital. The Journal of Economic History 69 (03): Armstrong, Alex and Frank D. Lewis International Migration with Capital Constraints: Interpreting Migration from Netherlands to Canada in the 1920s. Canadian Journal of Economics 45 (2): Bandiera, O., I. Rasul, and M. Viarengo The Making of Modern America: Migratory Flows in the Age of Mass Migration. Journal of Development Economics 102: Bloch, Louis Facts about Mexican Immigration before and since the Quota Restriction Laws. Journal of the American Statistical Association 24 (165): Bodenhorn, Howard, Timothy Guinnane, and Thomas Mroz Problems of Sample- Selection Bias in the Historical Heights Literature: A Theoretical and Econometric Analysis. Yale Economic Department Working Paper no Borjas, George J Assimilation, Changes in Cohort Quality, and the Earnings of Immigrants. Journal of Labor Economics 3 (4): Borjas, George J Self-selection and the Earnings of Immigrants. The American Economic Review 77 (4): Cardenas, Gilberto United States Immigration Policy toward Mexico: An Historical Perspective. Chicano L. Rev. 2: Cardoso, Lawrence A Mexican Emigration to the United States, : Socioeconomic Patterns. University of Arizona Press Tucson. Carter, Susan B., Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. Millennial ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Case, Anne, and Christina Paxson Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes. Journal of Political Economy 116 (3):

29 Chiquiar, Daniel, and Gordon H. Hanson International Migration, Self Selection, and the Distribution of Wages: Evidence from Mexico and the United States. Journal of Political Economy 113 (2): Chiswick, Barry R The Effect of Americanization on the Earnings of Foreign-Born Men. The Journal of Political Economy 86 (5): Clark, Victor S Department of Commerce and Labor. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor. Volume XVI, Washington, DC. Coatsworth, John H Growth against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Cohn, Raymond L Mass Migration under Sail: European Immigration to the Antebellum United States. Cambridge University Press. Collins, William J. and Marianne H. Wanamaker. Forthcoming. Selection and Economic Gains in the Great Migration of African Americans: New Evidence from Linked Census Data. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Ettinger, Patrick W Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration, st ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Feliciano, Zadia M The Skill and Economic Performance of Mexican Immigrants from 1910 to Explorations in Economic History 38 (3): Ferrie, Joseph P Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum US Oxford University Press. Foerster, Robert F The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States: A Report Submitted to the Secretary of Labor. Washington: Government Print Office. Gibson, John, and David McKenzie Eight Questions about Brain Drain. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 25 (3): Goldin, Claudia The Political Economy of Immigration Restriction in the United States, 1890 to In The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy, University of Chicago Press. Gutiérrez, David G Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. University of California Press. Hanson, Gordon H., and Christopher Woodruff Emigration and educational attainment in Mexico. Unpublished Manuscript 29

30 Hatton, Timothy J., and Jeffrey G. Williamson International Migration in the Long Run: Positive Selection, Negative Selection, and Policy. In Labor Mobility and the World Economy, Springer. Humphries, Jane, and Timothy Leunig Was Dick Whittington Taller than Those he Left Behind? Anthropometric Measures, Migration and the Quality of Life in Early Nineteenth Century London? Explorations in Economic History 46 (1): Knight, Alan The Mexican Revolution. Cambridge Latin American studies. Vol Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. López-Alonso, Moramay Measuring Up: A History of Living Standards in Mexico, Stanford University Press Growth with Inequality: Living standards in Mexico, Journal of Latin American Studies 39 (01): The Military Option: Health, Nutrition and Living Conditions of Mexican Soldiers. Unpublished Manuscript Height of Mexican Men and Women from Military Passport Records, [Computer file]. ICPSR version. Mexico City, Mexico: Secretaria de la Defensa (SDN) [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. López-Alonso, Moramay, and Raúl Porras Condey The Ups and Downs of Mexican Economic Growth: The Biological Standard of Living and Inequality, Economics & Human Biology 1 (2): McKenzie, David, and Hillel Rapoport Self-selection Patterns in Mexico-US Migration: The Role of Migration Networks. The Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (4): Network Effects and the Dynamics of Migration and Inequality: Theory and Evidence from Mexico. Journal of Development Economics 84 (1): Moraga, Jesus Fernandez-Huertas New Evidence on Emigrant Selection. The Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (1): Ngai, Mae M The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, Law and History Review 21 (1): Persico, Nicola, Andrew Postlewaite, and Dan Silverman The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height. Journal of Political Economy 112 (5):

31 Rockoff, Hugh Until it's Over, Over There: The US Economy in World War I. NBER Working Paper Ruggles, Steven, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. (2010). Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Schick, Andreas, and Richard Steckel Height as a Proxy for Cognitive and Non- Cognitive Ability. NBER Working Paper Schultz, T. Paul Wage Gains Associated with Height as a Form of Health Human Capital. American Economic Review 92 (2): Spencer, Elizabeth A., Paul N. Appleby, Gwyneth K. Davey, and Timothy J. Key Validity of Self-reported Height and Weight in 4808 EPIC Oxford Participants. Public Health Nutrition 5 (04): Steckel, Richard H Heights and Human Welfare: Recent Developments and New Directions. Explorations in Economic History 46 (1): Stature and the Standard of Living. Journal of Economic Literature 33 (4): Stolz, Yvonne, and Joerg Baten Brain Drain in the Age of Mass Migration: Does Relative Inequality Explain Migrant Selectivity? Explorations in Economic History 49 (2): Thomas, Duncan, and John Strauss Health and Wages: Evidence on Men and Women in Urban Brazil. Journal of Econometrics 77 (1): United States Bureau of Immigration. 1914; Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor. Woodruff, Christopher, and Rene Zenteno Migration Networks and Microenterprises in Mexico. Journal of Development Economics 82 (2): Zeidel, Robert F Immigrants, Progressives, and Exclusion Politics: The Dillingham Commission, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 31

32 Total Migrant Flow Figures and Tables Figure 1 Immigrant Flows to the United States, Great Britain Ireland Scandinavia Germany Greece Italy Spain Mexico Notes: Immigrant flows are aggregated in five year bins. Source: Historical Statistics of the United States (Carter et al., 2006) Figure 2 Location of Border Stations 32

33 Figure 3 Sample Manifest from Ajo, Arizona 33

34 Figure 4 Heights: Immigrants versus Military Notes: Observations below 140cm in height are dropped, although results are unchanged if they are included; Epanechinikov Kernel used with a bandwidth equal to Sources: Migrant heights from border crossing manifests; Military heights from Lopez-Alonso (2003). Figure 5 Heights: Immigrants versus Passport Notes: Observations below 140cm in height are dropped, although results are unchanged if they are included; Epanechinikov Kernel used with a bandwidth equal to Sources: Migrant heights from border crossing manifests; Passport heights from Lopez-Alonso (2003). 34

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