In a 2009 paper, a U.S.-British trio of social scientists led by David Card of the University of California at Berkeley used survey data from 21 countries to show that concern for compositional amenities is much more important in explaining public opinion on immigration than economic concerns, such as immigration’s impact on wages and taxes.
Anxiety about cultural change can, and often does, outweigh evidence on immigration’s economic impact — even positive data showing immigration actually raises wages overall, or that undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes.
The study found that “compositional concerns” rise as educational attainment falls. As you acquire more skills and information, it becomes easier, presumably, to adapt to an increasingly diverse culture. And the converse also holds.
The analysis (previously reported by Thomas B. Edsall of the New York Times) was based on survey data from Europe over a decade ago. Still, the fact that the Card team’s findings applied across different societies on that continent suggests relevance to the United States, too — as does the fact that Trump just got himself elected president with overwhelming support from non-college-educated whites in smaller cities and rural counties by telling them he would build a wall on the Mexican border, impose “extreme vetting” on would-be immigrants and deport large numbers of the undocumented.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member