MIGRATION AND INCOME: THE CASE OF THE PUERTO RICANS IN THE UNITED STATES

This dissertation relates the wages of the Puerto Rican males in the United States and in Puerto Rico to their migratory experience. Migration is analyzed as an investment in human capital determined by the matching of age-related individual needs and location-specific opportunities and goods. Moreover, the length of stay in each country partially determines the level of information about job opportunities and, thus, the individual earnings.;Consistent coefficient estimates of the wage equation are obtained by introducing a migration selectivity factor into the wage equation that takes into account the biased sample problem created by the dependence of observed wages in each country on the migration decision rule. Other explanatory variables are schooling, experience, weeks worked in 1969, place of birth, whether a person is a first-time, repeat or onward migrant, and climate as a nonpecuniary location-specific characteristic. A separate wage equation is estimated for the group of migrants and nonmigrants in Puerto Rico and the United States.;Cross sectional data indicate that the internal rate of return on migrating from Puerto Rico to the United States at age 14 and returning to the Island at age 30 for the rest of the individual's working life is 8.5 percent. Age, experience and weeks worked have positive effects on wages. The return migrants in Puerto Rico have the highest earnings while the Puerto Rican males born in the United States who do not migrate to the Island earn 33 percent more wages than their immigrant parents.;The appropriate matching of locational characteristics and individual needs partially determines the effect of migration on wages. In particular, it is found that younger migrants go to the United States to acquire skills and experience, while older migrants return to Puerto Rico where their acquired skills are relatively well paid. The wages of the migrants in the United States, therefore, tend to be slightly lower than the wages of the older residents in the United States, while the wages of the return migrants in the Island are 32 percent higher than the wages of the nonmigrants in Puerto Rico. By contrast, individuals born in the United States of Puerto Rican parents who migrate to the Island have lower wages than all the groups in both countries.;The migration period is the 1960 decade, and the individual data are drawn from the Public Use Samples of the U.S. and Puerto Rico censuses of 1970.;Relative to the older Puerto Ricans residents in the United States, first-time and repeat migrants have lower wages, but onward migrants who moved sequentially within the United States have wages 19 percent higher than the older residents in the Mainland.;Puerto Ricans who migrate to warmer states forsake 365 dollars of annual wages per additional cooling-degree day enjoyed in each day of the year.