European immigrants to the UK have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits, helping to relieve the fiscal burden on UK-born workers and contributing to the
financing of public services – according to new research by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
European immigrants who arrived in the UK since 2000 have contributed more than £20bn to UK public finances between 2001 and 2011. Moreover, they have endowed the country with productive human capital that would have cost the UK £6.8bn in spending on education.
Over the period from 2001 to 2011, European immigrants from the EU-15 countries contributed 64% more in taxes than they received in benefits. Immigrants from the Central and East European ‘accession’ countries (the ‘A10’) contributed 12% more than they received.
Immigration to the UK since 2000 has been of substantial net fiscal benefit, with immigrants contributing more than they have received in benefits and transfers. This is true for immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe as well as the rest of the EU.
Immigrants who arrived since 2000 were 43% less likely than natives to receive state benefits or tax credits. They were also 7% less likely to live in social housing.
The value of the education of immigrants in the UK labour market who arrived since 2000 and that has been paid for in the immigrants’ origin countries amounts to £6.8bn over the period between 2000 and 2011. By contributing to ‘pure’ public goods (such as defence or basic research), immigrants arriving since 2000 have saved the UK taxpayer an additional £8.5bn over the same period.
- Considering all immigrants who were living in the UK over the years between 1995 and 2011, a period over which the net fiscal contribution of natives was negative (and accumulated to about £591bn), EEA immigrants contributed 10% more than natives (in relative terms), while non-EEA immigrants’ contributions were almost 9% lower.
- Over the same period from 1995 to 2011, immigrants who lived in the UK endowed the UK labour market with human capital that would have cost about £49bn if it were produced through the UK education system, and contributed about £82bn to fixed or ‘pure’ public goods.
I think these figures answer the question, given the money that comes in to fund public services,.