Immigration and Access to Fringe Benefits: Evidence from the Tobacco Use Supplements

Date01 April 2018
AuthorDouglas Webber,Jody L. Sindelar,Johanna Catherine Maclean
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12205
Published date01 April 2018
Immigration and Access to Fringe Benets:
Evidence from the Tobacco Use Supplements
*
JOHANNA CATHERINE MACLEAN, DOUGLAS WEBBER, and
JODY L. SINDELAR
We examine the extent to which assimilation and residential ethnic enclaves are
associated with immigrant access to smoking-related fringe benets. In particular,
we consider access to ofce smoking bans and employer-sponsored smoking ces-
sation programs. We rst document differences in access to these benets
between immigrant and native workers. Second, we show that assimilation is pos-
itively associated with smoking-related fringe benet access while enclave resi-
dence does not predict access. These ndings broaden our understanding of
immigrant employment.
Introduction
This study examines the importance of economic assimilation and ethnic
enclave residence for access to smoking-related fringe benets among U.S.
immigrants, as measured by protection from exposure to environmental
tobacco smoke (ETS) in the workplace and access to employer-sponsored
smoking cessation programs. To this end, we use detailed smoking-related
information contained in the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supple-
ments (TUS) between 1995 and 2011. Thus, our study contributes to the
broader literature on immigrant employment outcomes by considering impor-
tant, but unstudied, forms of fringe benets.
We chose to consider smoking-related fringe benets because smoking
imposes both large internal costs on smokers and external costs on society.
For example, smoking leads to $119 billion in health-care costs per year
JEL: I1, JI.
*The authorsafliations are, respectively, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NBER, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts; and IZA, Bonn, Germany. E-mail: catherine.maclean@temple.edu; Temple Univer-
sity, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and IZA, Bonn, Germany. E-mail: douglaswebber@temple.edu; and Yale
University, New Haven, Connecticut; NBER, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and IZA, Bonn, Germany. E-mail:
jody.sindelar@yale.edu. The authors thank David Simon, an anonymous referee, and session participants at
the 2013 Addiction Health Services Research Conference and 2015 International Health Economists Associ-
ation World Congress for helpful comments and suggestions.
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Vol. 57, No. 2 (April 2018). ©2018 Regents of the University of California
Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.
235
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2008). Smoking increases health-
care costs through increased morbidity and mortality (Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention 2008), use of publicly provided health insurance (Zhang
et al. 1999), and higher insurance premiums for smokers and nonsmokers
(Halpern, Madison, and Volpp 2009; Pearson and Lieber 2009). The full costs
of smoking may extend to the labor market through lower productivity and
increased absenteeism (Berman et al. 2014; Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention 2008; Sherman and Lynch 2013). Last, ETS exposure may harm
nonsmokershealth (Institute of Medicine 2010).
Immigrants are potentially an important group to study as the U.S. immi-
grant population has increased substantially over time. In 2011 there were
more than 40 million immigrants living in the United States, an increase from
31.1 million (23 percent) in 2000 (Pew Research Center 2013). Also, the type
of immigrant who chooses to migrate to the United States is changing. During
previous migration waves (e.g., 1890 to 1920) immigrants often originated
from Europe, while more modern waves tend to migrate from Latin American
and Asia (Pew Research Center 2013); importantly, these countries often have
higher smoking rates than the United States (Leung 2013). While immigrants
seem to have lower prevalence rates of smoking than the rest of their country
and even than those in the United States (Leung 2013), a nontrivial proportion
of immigrants to the United States do smoke: 13 percent of immigrants in our
sample relative to 21 percent of natives in our sample.
There are several reasons that immigrants may have lower access to high-
quality jobs, and therefore the smoking-related fringe benets we study, partic-
ularly when they initially enter the United States. Immigrants may have less
education than natives (or immigrant educational credentials may not be
directly transferable to the U.S. labor market), lack necessary residency
requirements, and/or have weak English language skills. Moreover, immigrants
may face discrimination (statistical or taste-based) in the U.S. labor market and
may not have access to a job referral network that allows them to access high-
quality jobs. Last, immigrants may have less information than natives on the
health harms of smoking and ETS, or may not recognize the value of smok-
ing-related fringe benets, and thus may not seek out jobs that offer such ben-
ets. These mechanisms need not work in isolation; indeed, it is plausible they
work in conjunction with one another. Thus, given the type of job in which
many immigrants work, we might expect immigrants to have less access to
smoking-related fringe benets, and indeed nonwage compensation more
broadly.
Several ndings emerge from our analysis. First, we document differences
in access to the smoking-related fringe benets we study between immigrants
and natives. Second, we nd that assimilation into U.S. society may allow
236 / JOHANNA CATHERINE MACLEANN,DOUGLAS WEBBER,AND JODY L. SINDELAR

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