No country for young people? The rise of anti-immigration politics in ageing societies
中文摘要
我们运用公民—候选人选举模型，考察人口老龄化对移民政策的影响。在每一期，年轻人工作并缴税，老年人则领取社会保障金。所有移民均为年轻人，这意味着他们为公共服务和社会保障成本的筹资作出了重要贡献。在本地居民中，老年人和穷人从公共支出中获益最多。然而，由于这两类选民没有将移民带来的正向财政效应内在化，他们在支持主张限制移民并提高高收入者税负的候选人方面具有共同利益。人口老龄化扩大了这些社会人口群体的规模，进而增强了其政治力量，从而导致移民政策更加严格、公共部门规模更大、税率更高以及社会福祉更低。使用英国数据对模型进行校准表明，这些效应的量级很大。研究还表明，该模型的推论与英国态度调查数据中观察到的模式一致。
Abstract
We investigate the effects of population ageing on immigration policies using a citizen-candidate model of elections. In each period, young people work and pay taxes while old people receive social security payments. Immigrants are all young, meaning they contribute significantly to financing the cost of public services and social security. Among natives, the elderly and the poor benefit the most from public spending. However, since these two types of voters do not internalise the positive fiscal effects of immigration, they have a common interest in supporting candidates who seek to curb immigration and increase the tax burden on high-income individuals. Population ageing increases the size and, in turn, the political power of such sociodemographic groups, resulting in more restrictive immigration policies, a larger public sector, higher tax rates, and lower societal well-being. Calibrating the model to UK data suggests that the magnitude of these effects is large. The implications of this model are shown to be consistent with the patterns observed in UK attitudinal data.