Cultural Biases in Migration: Estimating Non-Monetary Migration Costs

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2586425
• Publication Date: 2021-11-17T13:39:51Z
• Authors: Oliver Falck; Alfred Lameli; Jens Ruhose
• Keywords: internal migration; jel:D51; ddc:330; 05 social sciences; jel:J61; migration costs, culture, internal migration, psychic cost; R23; culture; migration costs; D51; 0502 economics and business; 8. Economic growth; J61; jel:R23; psychic cost

Ever since Sjaastad (1962), researchers have struggled to quantify the psychic costs of migration. We monetize cost as wage premium for moving a culturally different location. combine administrative social security panel data with proxy cultural difference based on historical dialect dissimilarity between German counties. Conditional geographic distance and pre-migration profiles, we find that migrants demand (indexed respect local rents) about 1 (1.5) percent overcoming one standard deviation in dissimilarity. The effect is driven by males those who earn above average occupational wages before migration, more pronounced geographically short moves, persistent over time.