We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than non-migrants. Conditional on occupational skills, education and earnings no longer predict migration decisions. Differential labor-market returns to occupational skills explain the observed selection pattern and significantly outperform previously used returns-to-skills measures in predicting migration. Results are persistent over time and hold within narrowly defined regional, sectoral, and occupational labor markets.

中文翻译：

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国际移民职业技能选拔

我们提供的第一个证据表明，国际移民对教育和收入的选择通过职业技能得以实现。将具有代表性的墨西哥任务调查中的新数据与丰富的个人级工人数据相结合，我们发现墨西哥移民到美国的人比非移民拥有更高的手工技能和更低的认知能力。以职业技能，教育和收入为条件的条件不再能预测移民决定。劳动力市场对职业技能的不同回报说明了观察到的选择模式，并且在预测移民人数方面明显优于先前使用的技能回报率指标。结果会随着时间的流逝而持续存在，并局限于狭窄的区域，部门和职业劳动力市场。