Does economic self‐interest determine public attitudes toward immigrants? An econometric case study in Japan

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• Author: Ana Maria Takahashi,Shingo Takahashi
• Date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12318

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Does economic self-interest determine public attitudes

toward immigrants? An econometric case study in Japan

Ana Maria Takahashi

1,2

| Shingo Takahashi

3

1

Department of Global Studies, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, Kyoto, Japan

2

Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

3

Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

Correspondence

Ana Maria Takahashi, Department of Global Studies, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, Kyoto, Japan.

Email: a_takaha@kufs.ac.jp

Funding information

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant/Award Numbers: 20K01726, 19K01718

Abstract

We examine two economic self-interest hypotheses regarding the determinants of public

attitudes toward immigrants: (1) the labor market hypothesis, which states that the

employment and wage impacts of immigration determine the public attitudes, and (2) the

welfare state hypothesis, which states that natives hold negative perceptions of immi-

grants due to concerns that they may strain the country’s welfare budget. The first

hypothesis predicts that natives’education will affect pro-immigrant attitudes more posi-

tively when immigrants come from lower income countries. The second hypothesis pre-

dicts that natives’income affects the pro-immigrant attitudes more negatively when

immigrants come from lower income countries. We use the Japanese General Social Sur-

vey, which asks respondents’tolerance toward immigrants from different countries, all-

owing us to control for unobserved individual characteristics through a method akin to

the fixed effect estimation. Our results indicate no difference in the effects of education

and income on pro-immigrant attitudes regardless of whether immigrants come from

high- or low-income countries. We conclude that economic self-interest does not explain

Japanese public attitudes toward immigrants. We discuss the policy implications about

how to improve public attitudes toward immigrants.

KEYWORDS

attitude toward immigrants, immigration policies, immigration systems in Japan

JEL CLASSIFICATION

J15, J61

DOI: 10.1111/asej.12318

© 2024 East Asian Economic Association and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Received: 23 September 2022; Accepted: 8 February 2024

Asian Econ. J. 2024;38:61–85. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/asej 61

1|INTRODUCTION

Labor economics theory predicts that the employment and wages of native

workers decrease when immigrants with substitutable skills flow in and increase

when immigrants with complementary skills flow in. This indicates that high-

skilled natives may perceive high-skilled immigrants as a threat and thus view

them negatively, whereas they may perceive low-skilled immigrants positively

who are likely to be their complements. This concept is known as “the labor

market hypothesis”of the determination of the natives’attitude toward

immigrants.

Another economic channel through which natives’attitude is shaped is the

anxiety that immigrants may strain the country’s welfare budget. Although

studies such as Preston (2014) and Dustmann and Frattini (2014) have found

that the overall fiscal effects of immigrants are positive, a common narrative

remains that immigrants abuse social welfare. Regardless of whether such anxi-

ety is warranted, if it shapes perceptions toward immigrants, high-income

natives would negatively perceive low-skilled immigrants because they bear a

larger share of the welfare budget due to progressive personal tax, and low-

skilled immigrants are more likely to receive social security benefits. Similarly,

high-income natives may welcome high-skilled immigrants, expecting them to

contribute to the welfare budget, alleviating their tax burden. This concept is

known as the welfare state hypothesis of the determination of natives’attitudes

toward immigrants.

1

These two hypotheses together constitute the economic self-interest hypothe-

sis regarding the determinants of natives’attitudes toward immigrants. The

labor market hypothesis was first tested by Scheve and Slaughter (2001), who

used education as a proxy for skills. They found that in the United States low-

skilled natives are more likely to oppose immigration. Using data from several

European countries Mayda (2006), found that in countries where natives are

more educated than immigrants, a strong positive correlation exists between

natives’skills and support for immigration.

2

The welfare state hypothesis was

first tested by Hanson et al. (2007), who found that wealthier natives are more

likely to oppose immigration, thus supporting the welfare state hypothesis.

Facchini and Mayda (2009) also found that native income is negatively corre-

lated with pro-immigrant attitudes when immigrants are unskilled.

One problem with using natives’education or income to test these hypothe-

ses is that they are likely correlated with natives’unobserved characteristics. As

D’Hombres and Nunziata (2016) demonstrated, education is likely to be

1

In some countries, a possible housing shortage due to an influx of immigrants may cause negative attitudes

toward immigrants. However, we believe that this concern does not apply to Japan because Japan did not have

significant housing shortage issues due to its flexible zoning system (see Appelebaum, 2023).

2

O’Rourke and Sinnott (2006) used an International Labor Organization’s skill classification and show that skilled

workers are less likely to oppose immigration than unskilled workers.

62 TAKAHASHI and TAKAHASHI