Individual Attitudes towards Immigration in Aging Populations

This research empirically establishes the hypothesis that the process of
population aging in a society as a whole affects the attitudes of its members
towards immigration. Hence, an aging social environment exerts an effect
on the attitudes of individuals towards immigration after accounting for
their age and other individual characteristics. We test this hypothesis in
a multilevel analysis of individuals living in 25 European OECD countries
over the period 2002-2017. Our measure of “societal population aging” is the
old-age dependency ratio. “Attitudes” are taken from immigration related
questions in eight consecutive rounds of the European Social Survey. For
these attitudes we find non-linear, U-shaped relationships. Hence, the effect
of societal population aging on individual attitudes towards immigration is
negative in young societies and positive in old ones.