International Migration Economics Chair : New policy brief on the epidemiological approach to comparative development

Revisiting the epidemiological approach to comparative development using data on foreign ancestry

Is culture an attribute of places or of people? One way to address this question is to use migrants who move between places and see whether culture is persistent or malleable. This approach is called “epidemiological” in the economics literature and builds on first-, second-, and more-generations migrants, i.e., individuals with more or less recent foreign ancestries. The research project summarized in this policy brief points to a number of data and methodological challenges this literature is faced with. In particular, two critical challenges arise: self-selection into reporting an ancestry, and the unobservability of the time elapsed since ancestral migration. Individuals reporting a foreign ancestry may have stronger cultural attachments to their origin, potentially leading to spurious evidence of cultural persistence. Additionally, varying times since ancestral migration can confound results, as cultural assimilation and persistence are shaped by the number of generations born in the destination country. This policy brief discusses methodological innovations to detect and address these threats effectively.

Written by

• Simone Bertoli, professor at CERDI, University Clermont Auvergne, and research fellow at IZA and at IC Migrations.
• Melchior Clerc, PhD student at CERDI, University Clermont Auvergne.
• Jordan Loper, associate professor at CERDI, University Clermont Auvergne.
• Èric Roca Fernández, assistant professor at CERDI, University Clermont Auvergne.