1. The Long‐Run Effects of Immigration: Evidence across a Barrier to Refugee Settlement
- Author:
- Antonio Ciccone and Jan Nimczik
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Some 280 million people around the world are first‐generation immigrants; in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries, first‐generation immigrants make up around 14 percent of the population. The economic effects of immigration have become better understood in recent decades. A new focus of research on the effects of immigration is its long‐run impact on productivity, wages, and income. We contribute to this research by examining the long‐run economic effects of the arrival of refugees in what would become West Germany after the end of World War II (WWII) in 1945. This period was characterized by one of the largest population movements in modern times. Between 1945 and 1949, millions of people from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and eastern parts of prewar Germany were displaced westward. When the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was founded in 1949, these refugees made up around 15 percent of the country’s population.
- Topic:
- History, Immigration, Refugees, Resettlement, and World War II
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Germany, and United States of America