fiscal burden are the very same immigrants who provide the economic benefit reported in the labor market chapters.

To see the effect of continuing with this same mix, but increasing the number of immigrants, we consider the expected impact of admitting a randomly chosen immigrant from a pool similar to the pool of actual immigrant arrivals over the past few years. This number is an NPV of +$80,000 (from the last column of Table 7.5).

Of course, all of these numbers are based on a specific set of baseline assumptions, each of which may be questioned, so they should not be taken at face value. In order to investigate the sensitivity of the results to changes in these assumptions, we have redone the entire set of simulations under alternative assumptions, as discussed in the next section. In a subsequent section we present further experiments that will indicate the contributions of different factors to the results.

Earlier, we described variations on the baseline scenario. The voluminous results of these alternative calculations are presented in Appendix 7.B in tables 7.B1, 7.B2, and 7.B3, which present results for immigrants in each of the education categories. Each table gives the NPV for selected ages of arrival: 0, 20, 21, 40, and 70. Age 20 is close to the modal age of arrival and often has close to the peak NPV, and 70 is the age of arrival with the greatest negative value.²⁶ The tables also give the corresponding NPVs of the third and later generations for comparison purposes, along with the difference between immigrant NPV and third-generation NPV. Because variation is so complex, it is difficult to form an impression of the overall effects of the different scenarios on the calculated fiscal impact of an immigrant. Table 7.5 presents NPVs averaged across age at arrival of immigrants, regardless of education, and Figure 7.13 presents NPVs of immigrants of various ages averaged across their education level—Table 7.6 takes both attributes into account. Using the age-education frequencies among recent immigrants, as reported in the 1994 and 1995 CPS, we can average individual immigrants with any combination of age and education.

In this exercise, the baseline results appear to be quite robust, at least regarding the sign of the outcomes. At the state/local level, the average fiscal impact is negative, with present value usually in the range of -$20,000 to -$30,000. At the federal level, however, the average fiscal impact is positive and typically quite large, mostly in the range of $60,000 to $130,000. The average total fiscal impact

Front Matter (R1-R14)

Summary (1-13)

1 The Immigration Debate (14-19)

2 Background to Contemporary U.S. Immigration (20-75)

3 The Face of the U.S. Population in 2050 (76-134)

4 Immigration's Effects on Jobs and Wages: First Principles (135-172)

5 Immigration's Effects on Jobs and Wages: Empirical Evidence (173-253)

6 Do Immigrants Impose a Net Fiscal Burden? Annual Estimates (254-296)

7 The Future Fiscal Impacts of Current Immigrants (297-362)

8 The Social Dimensions of Immigration (363-406)

Biographical Sketches (407-412)

Index (413-434)