Economic Incentives for Migration into the United States from Mexico

The current United States president hinged his 2024 campaign on a few key divisive issues, with immigration into the United States from Central and South America one of the most significant. Scapegoating of vulnerable populations is not a new concept; it is a common method of authoritarian governments to divide a population by attacking a people group separate from their own. In addition to this, the United States government has been entirely ineffective at its efforts to limit immigration, as seen in the direct correlation between increased border patrol funding and militarization and the numbers of immigrants crossing the southern border into the United States (Massey, 2017). Using data obtained from a collaborative research project by the Mesoamerican Migration Project based at Brown University and El Colegio de Mexico, we seek to understand the economic incentives to migrate to the United States amidst a fraught political climate and surging wealth inequality. We calculate the head of household’s hourly rate at eight hours a day, six days a week in Mexico and at the rate of eight hours a day, five days a week for America. This paper seeks to understand income patterns between individuals’ jobs in Mexico and the income they earn on their first migration into the United States and their last or most recent immigration into the United States. Preliminary analysis indicates a strong correlation between a migrant's last formal wages in Mexico and their first formal wage in the US, but one that weakens by their most recent reported formal job after their last migration experience.