local levels, the results including all descendants are little different from the immigrant household results: -$27 billion versus -$29 billion. The impacts of the two missing groups (adult children of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants) offset each other. This is not true at the federal level, where the discrepancy is severe. Including all concurrent descendants of immigrants triples the federal surplus!

In a separate study, we analyzed the fiscal impact of immigrants in a forward-looking longitudinal model. For each age at arrival and education level, we calculated the impact of the immigrant and all future descendants by projecting their survival, fertility, return migration, educational attainment, taxes, and benefits (see Lee and Miller, 1997; National Research Council, 1997:Chap. 7). In that analysis, we also calculated the average impact of immigrants, weighting by the age and educational composition of recently arrived immigrants. The average present value (over a 300-year horizon and expressed in 1996 dollars) of the stream of net fiscal impacts of an immigrant arriving in 1994 to state and local governments combined is -$25,000, to the federal government $105,000, and overall is $80,000 per immigrant admitted. For the purpose of comparison, we can multiply these present values by the interest rate (3%) to convert to annual flows: -$750 at the state and local levels, $3,150 at the federal level, and a combined annualized fiscal impact of $2,400 per immigrant. The concurrent descendant cross-sectional approach yielded estimates of -$1,200 at the state and local levels, $2,230 at the federal level, and a combined annual fiscal impact of $1,030 per immigrant (in 1994 dollars).

There is no reason to expect a close agreement for these two very different methods, except perhaps under certain hypothetical steady-state conditions. The cross-sectional method is affected by the historical trends in the volume and composition of immigration streams and in vital rates, because these shape the current age and educational distribution of immigrants and descendants. These do not enter into the longitudinal calculation. At the same time, the cross-sectional method does not take into account projected trends in taxes, benefits, educational attainment, and vital rates, unlike the longitudinal method. The longitudinal calculation refers to an immigrant arriving in 1994, whereas the cross-sectional calculation is based on immigrants arriving at various times in the twentieth century.

We have argued that the longitudinal approach is the preferred method of assessing the fiscal impact of immigrants for most purposes. Yet because this method is forward looking, it must inevitably rely on projections far into the

Front Matter (R1-R14)

1 Introduction (1-12)

2 An Economic Framework for Assessing the Fiscal Impacts of Immigration (13-65)

3 Fiscal Impacts of Immigrant and Native Households: A New Jersey Case Study (66-119)

4 The Fiscal Impacts of Immigrants: A California Case Study (120-182)

5 The Current Fiscal Impact of Immigrants and Their Descendants: Beyond the Immigrant Household (183-205)

6 Immigrants and Natives in General Equilibrium Trade Models (206-238)

7 Labor Market Outcomes of Female Immigrants in the United States (239-288)

8 Historical Background to Current Immigration Issues (289-366)

9 Immigration and Crime in the United States (367-387)

10 The Impact of Recent Immigration on Population Redistribution Within the United States (388-448)

Index (449-458)