THE GREAT MEXICAN EMIGRATION

The Review of Economics and Statistics, November 2010, 92(4): 798–810

Gordon H. Hanson and Craig McIntosh*


Abstract—In this paper, we examine net emigration from Mexico over the
period 1960 to 2000. The data are consistent with labor supply shocks
having made a substantial contribution to Mexican emigration, accounting
for two-fifths of Mexican labor flows to the United States over the last two
decades of the twentieth century. Net emigration rates by Mexican state
birth year cohort display a strong positive correlation with the initial size
of the Mexican cohort relative to the corresponding U.S. cohort. In states
with long histories of emigration, the effects of cohort size on emigration
are relatively strong, consistent with the existence of preexisting networks.