The Immigrant Subsidy in US Agriculture: Farm Employment, Poverty, and Welfare

This article examines relationships between immigration, farm employment, poverty, and welfare use in 65 towns and cities with populations ranging from 1,000 to 20,000 in 1990 in the major agricultural areas of California. It tests the hypothesis that expanding labor-intensive agriculture creates a negative externality by drawing large numbers of workers from Mexico, offering many of them poverty-level earnings, and increasing public assistance use in rural towns. Econometric findings reveal a circular relationship between farm employment and immigration. An additional 100 farm jobs are associated with 136 more immigrants, 139 more poor residents, and 79 more people receiving welfare benefits in rural towns. An additional 100 immigrants, in turn, are associated with 37 more farm jobs. Most of the impact of farm employment on poverty is indirect, through immigration. Each additional California farm job was associated with $1,103 in welfare payments in 1990. Since the average California farmworker in 1990 earned $7,320, the "welfare subsidy" associated with using immigrants to fill farm jobs was equivalent to 15 percent of farmworker earnings.