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57 Soc. Sec. Bull. 37 (1994)
Social Security and the Emigration of Immigrants

handle is hein.journals/ssbul57 and id is 39 raw text is: Social Security and the Emigration of Immigrants by Harriet Orcutt Duleep* Each year the Social Security Administration forecasts the financial sta- tus of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs by projecting trends in key variables such as the labor-force participation and earnings of the U. S. population. In the difficult task of projecting the long-term financial status of Social Security, assumptions are made concern- ing the relationship of immigrants to Social Security. An important aspect of that relationship is the emigration of immigrants. This article describes the general assumptions related to the level and timing of emigration that underlie projections of Social Security's financial status and examines how closely these assumptions fit research findings based on a variety of data sources. Previous trends in emigration and factors that may affect current and future levels of emigration are described. The article also presents theoretical expectations and empirical evidence con- cerning the timing of emigration. *This work has been done in the author's capacity as a visiting scholar to the Division of Economic Research, Office of Research and Statistics of the Social Se- curity Administration. The author is a senior research associate of the Urban Insti- tute, Washington, DC. Correspondence should be addressed to Harriet Duleep in care of the Social Security Bulletin, Room 205, Van Ness Center, 4301 Connecticut Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20008. Over the past decade, more than a third of the Nation's population growth was due to immigration. This influx of new immi- grants will have a profound effect on So- cial Security by affecting the size and composition of the population contributing to and benefiting from the Old-Age, Survi- vors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The extent to which immigration influences the Social Security system is affected by the emigration of immigrants. Emigration affects how many immigrants contribute to the system, how long immi- grants contribute to the system, and whether immigrants are eventually eligible for Social Security benefits. Although reasonably good estimates of the number of legal immigrants are available on an annual basis from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), little is known about emigration, other than that the vast majority of emigrants are immi- grants. This lack of information led the 1991 Advisory Council on Social Security to conclude: Because of lack of data on emigration and other-than-legal immigration, even present levels of net immigration are only educated guesses that may be far from accurate. (Social Security Adminis- tration 1991, p. 33). This article describes the general as- sumptions related to emigration that under- lie projections of Social Security's finan- cial status and examines how closely these assumptions fit research findings. The first section provides a simplified overview of how immigration enters into the Social Security projections and summarizes the assumptions that are made about the mag- nitude and timing of emigration. The second section focuses on the magnitude of emigration, first describing previous trends in emigration and then discussing factors that may affect current and future levels of emigration. The following sec- tions focus on the timing of emigration. The first one proposes four hypothetical models of the decision to emigrate and explores the implications of these models for the timing of emigration. The next section sheds empirical light on the timing of emigration. The article concludes with a discussion of the correspondence be- Social Security Bulletin • Vol. 57, No. 1 • Spring 1994

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