Age at immigration and educational attainment of young immigrants

This paper investigates up to what immigration age the educational attainment of young immigrants in the Netherlands is similar to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants. The borderline immigration age appears to depend on gender and country of origin.     

Ethnic externalities in education and second-generation immigrants

I analyse the role of ethnic and native human capital – defined, respectively, as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups and of natives within a specific region – and of ethnic concentrations in the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in Germany. Compared to natives’ children, parents’ education has a small and insignificant effect on second-generation immigrants’ education. Ethnic concentrations have a negative effect, while ethnic capital is insignificant. The effect of native capital, too, is insignificant but much larger in magnitude than the effect of ethnic capital. For women, mother’s education is relatively more important. For men, ethnic concentrations constitute a stronger impediment to educational attainment than for women.     

Horizontal vs. vertical transmission of fertility preferences

I study the cultural transmission of fertility preferences among second-generation immigrant women observed in U.S. Censuses from 1910 to 1970. As hypothesized by Bisin and Verdier (2001), the transmission of preferences can be “vertical” or “horizontal”. Using a unique source documenting the variation in fertility behavior in Europe before and after the first demographic transition (1830–1970), I unpack the influence of parents (measured by source-country fertility at the time of departure from Europe) versus the influence of peers from the same source-country (measured by fertility of the same-age cohorts living in the source-country and transmitted by same-age recent immigrants). I find that the transmission mechanism is crucially affected by the number of foreign-born immigrant peers living in the same MSA. On one hand, the “vertical” channel of transmission is stronger in places where there are few newly arrived foreign-born immigrant couples from the same source-countries. On the other hand, the “horizontal” channel prevails in MSA’s densely populated by recently arrived immigrants from the same source-countries of second-generation ones.     

SEGREGATION IN THE AUSTRALIAN LABOUR MARKET*

An important measure of the success of immigration is the assimilation of immigrants into the labour force of the host country. This criterion is important from both the perspective of immigrants themselves and that of the host country. Conversely, concentration of migrants in a few sectors is undesirable because of its adverse socio‐economic consequences. Since the pattern of distribution of migrant employment influences the structure and outcomes in the labour market in various ways, it attracts public, academic and policymakers’ attention. The present paper employs various numerical measures to estimate the degree of immigrant segregation across occupations and industries in Australia. The results indicate that the occupational distribution of immigrants is very similar to the proportion of native workers employed in the various occupations. This similarity also characterises the industrial distribution of immigrant employment. Thus, contrary to popular perception and findings for the United States, evidence from the Australian labour market does not indicate the existence of widespread immigrant segregation.     

Taxes and culture of leisure: Impact on labor supply in Europe

This paper uses micro data from the European Social Survey to investigate the impact of culture of leisure and taxes on labor force participation and hours worked of second-generation immigrants who reside in 26 European countries. These individuals are born in Europe, and they have been exposed to institutional, legal and labor market structures of their countries, including the tax rates. Their fathers are first-generation immigrants who migrated from 47 different countries. I construct measures of “taste for leisure” in the country of origin of each immigrant father. I employ average and marginal tax rates for each country of residence, and control for individual characteristics, in addition to a large set of attributes of the country of residence and country of origin. I demonstrate that systematic selection of first-generation immigrants (the fathers of the individuals analyzed) to countries of destination based on the tax rates is unlikely. The results show that for women, both taxes and culture of leisure impact labor force participation and hours worked. For men, taxes influence labor supply both at the intensive and the extensive margins, but culture of leisure has no impact. The results are insensitive to the omission of immigrants from Muslim countries.     

Immigrant job search assimilation in Canada

Immigrant assimilation is a major issue in many countries. While most of the literature studies assimilation through a human capital framework, we examine the role of job search assimilation. To do so, we estimate an equilibrium search model of immigrants operating in the same labour market as natives, where newly arrived immigrants have lower job offer arrival rates than natives but can acquire the same arrival rates according to a stochastic process. Using Canadian panel data, we find substantial differences in job offer arrival and destruction rates between natives and immigrants that are able to account for three quarters of the observed earnings gap. The estimates imply that immigrants take on average 13 years to acquire the native search parameters. Due to immigrants facing much lower on‐the‐job offer arrival rates than natives, the model predicts that earnings growth through job search is minimal for immigrants prior to their job search assimilation.     

The Impact of Industry Restructuring from 1971 to 1991 on the Employment Experience of Demographic Groups

Abstract
In this article, an empirical measure devised by Bonnell and Dixon (1983) is used to calculate the impact of structural change on the employment opportunities of males and females of different birthplace groups over the period 1971 to 1991. The measure calculates the percentage change in the employment of a particular demographic group¹ which would have occurred over the period 1971 to 1991, allowing for changes in the industry composition of employment, but holding constant both total employment growth and the group shares of employment in each industry. It is found that structural change had a greater negative impact on the employment opportunities of immigrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESBs), compared with its impact on the employment experience of other birthplace groups.
However, further analysis which allows for the group shares of employment in each industry to vary suggests that the direction and degree of inter-industry mobility have an important influence on the effect of structural change on the employment opportunities of different groups. It is found that the apparent labour-market disadvantage experienced by people from NESBs in response to structural change is in fact offset by their revealed capacity for inter-industry mobility from declining to growing industries.     

Risk aversion and the earnings of US immigrants and natives

The literature on the earnings of natives and immigrants has heretofore ignored differences in compensating wages for job risks. It is possible that the risk involved in migration may indicate a greater willingness on the part of immigrants to accept riskier jobs than natives. Alternatively, immigrants may attempt to protect their migration investment by choosing occupations with less risk, indicating a higher degree of risk aversion. This paper examines differences in risk aversion between US immigrants and natives, and corresponding differentials in wage premiums for job risk. Our analysis suggests that on average immigrants are exposed to 21% less risk than natives, but receive a 25% higher risk premium. The higher degree of risk aversion of immigrants and their lower exposure to risk, and thus lower earnings, explains 5% of the higher observed earnings of natives. We also find that earlier immigrant cohorts (pre-1970) are employed in riskier jobs than are recent cohorts, but the difference accounts for only a small portion of the observed earnings differential. Finally, we estimate statistical values of life of $3.6 million for US natives and $4.6 million for immigrants, well within the range of previous studies.     

Homesickness and repeated migration

This paper presents a dynamic structural model of migration that is designed to help explain the migration behaviour of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US. Its key feature – which I call ‘homesickness’ – is a duration-dependent disutility from living abroad that keeps increasing while a migrant stays abroad and can be reset to zero only by returning to their home country. I estimate the model using data primarily from the Mexican Migration Project Survey and find that the model is capable of explaining, among other things, the fact that: (i) a non-negligible number of Mexican immigrants in the US return home after earning very little; (ii) these ‘unsuccessful’ immigrants are more likely to re-enter the US at a later date; and (iii) such ‘unsuccessful’ returns are more prevalent among immigrants who left their wives behind in Mexico. These facts are not easily reconciled with existing models of migration that do not feature homesickness.     

The labor market impact of immigration in Western Germany in the 1990s

In this article we estimate the wage and employment effects of recent immigration in Western Germany. Using administrative data for the period 1987-2001 and a labor-market equilibrium model, we find that the substantial immigration of the 1990s had very little adverse effects on native wages and on their employment levels. Instead, it had a sizeable adverse employment effect on previous immigrants as well as a small adverse effect on their wages. These asymmetric results are partly driven by a higher degree of substitution between old and new immigrants in the labor market and in part by the rigidity of wages in less than flexible labor markets. In a simple counter-factual experiment we show that in a world of perfect wage flexibility and no unemployment insurance the wage-bill loss of old immigrants would be much smaller.     

What Holds Back the Second Generation? The Intergenerational Transmission of Language Human Capital Among Immigrants

In 2000 Census microdata, various outcomes of second-generation immigrants are related to their parents' age at arrival to the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the "critical period" of language acquisition. We interpret this as an effect of the parent's English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for parental English proficiency. Estimates of the effect of parent's English-speaking proficiency using two-stage least squares yield significant, positive results for children's English-speaking proficiency and preschool attendance, and significant, negative results for dropping out of high school and being below age-appropriate grade. (JEL J13, J24, J62).     

Is there a wage premium for volunteer OSS engagement? – signalling,learning and noise

Volunteer-based open-source production has become a significant new model for the organization of software development. Economics often pictures this phenomenon as a case of signalling: individuals engage in the volunteer programming of open-source software (OSS) as a labour-market signal resulting in a wage premium. Yet, this explanation could so far not be empirically tested. This article fills this gap by estimating an upper-bound composite wage premium of voluntary OSS contributions and by separating the potential signalling effect of OSS engagement from other effects. Although some 70% of OSS contributors believe that OSS involvement benefits their careers, we find no actual labour-market premium for OSS engagement. The presence of other motives, such as fun of play or altruism, renders OSS contributions too noisy to function as a signal.     

Immigration and economic growth: do origin and destination matter?

This article assesses the heterogeneous effects of immigration on economic growth depending on both the origin and the destination countries. Following the development of a growth model augmented by human capital of immigrants, we estimate it in a dynamic panel setup using the system-GMM estimator. We find that the growth-enhancing effect of immigration is significantly larger when immigration flows from developed to developing economies than when it does to those that include both developed and developing economies. We interpret these results as evidence of immigrants from developed countries bringing with them their advanced knowledge into the developing countries.     

IMMIGRANT EARNINGS: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

This paper uses the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to analyze the determinants of the level and growth in earnings of adult male immigrants in their first 3.5 years in Australia. The theoretical framework is based on the immigrant adjustment model, which incorporates both the transferability of immigrant skills and selectively in migration. The cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses generate similar findings. The level and relative growth of earnings are higher for immigrants with higher levels of skill and who are economic/skills tested migrants, as distinct from family based and refugee migrants. The analysis indicates that immigrant economic assimilation does occur and that in these data the cross-section provides a good estimate of the longitudinal progress of immigrants. The findings are robust across statistical techniques.     

MAINTAINING MARKET POSITION: TEAM PERFORMANCE,REVENUE AND WAGE EXPENDITURE IN THE ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

This paper investigates the relationship between playing success and commercial success in team sports. Utilizing a data set relating to the English Premier League that combines both financial measures and indicators of playing skills and performances, our empirical analysis is based on three behavioural equations. Our analysis indicates that on‐field success can be directly related to players’ skills and abilities and that revenue is positively related to on‐field success. Wage expenditure is also shown to systematically reflect player skills and performances. One interpretation of this evidence is that investment in players’ skills and ability buys on‐field success, with richer teams becoming ever richer and able to maintain or even build upon success by spending more on players than less successful clubs. To the extent that richer clubs are successful in their objective there is a causal link between revenue earned and competitive imbalance via investments in players. The implications of this tendency within a league are discussed in our conclusion, which also considers the potentially wider implications of our study as they relate to the evolution of firm size and issues of market share.     

IMMIGRANT WAGE GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL UPGRADING

Immigrants to the United States routinely take jobs below their skill qualifications because of barriers to entering occupations. We use a structural model of immigrant job choice to quantify the benefits of potential policies to promote entry into suitable occupations. We estimate the model using longitudinal labor market data on immigrants to the United States. Our counterfactual results show that eliminating barriers to occupational entry would lead to only a small earnings increase for the average immigrant in our sample, but a substantial earnings increase for the most highly skilled immigrants.     

A PATHWAY TO HOMEOWNERSHIP? EVIDENCE FROM THE IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986

The impact of legal status on economic outcomes has been well documented in the literature with most research focused on labor market outcomes such as wages and occupational mobility. In this paper, I utilize the exogenous variation created the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 to estimate the effect of amnesty polices on homeownership among undocumented immigrants. Using a regression discontinuity framework, the results suggest that the IRCA increased homeownership rates of eligible immigrants by around 4 percentage points relative to ineligible immigrants. Moreover, an extension to the main analysis suggests that immigrants ineligible for the IRCA adjusted their household formation by increasing the rates of coresidency. (JEL J61, R23, R31)     

Labor markets and cultural values: Evidence from Japanese and American views about caregiving immigrants

One overlooked reason for the persistence of distinct cultural values across rich democracies, we argue, is a country's labor market structure. Parents seeking to position their children for long‐term success would do well to instill values consistent with requirements of the labor market in the country where their children are likely to work. To the extent that labor markets are fluid, as in the United States, parents should teach their children to be resourceful and creative. In countries like Japan with relatively rigid labor markets, where workers have one chance to land a long‐term contract with a leading company, parents instead should instill the values of hard work and respect for authority. We find evidence consistent with this argument in survey experiments about attitudes in the United States and Japan about the desirability of employing immigrants for care work, and what values the immigrant care workers should hold. We also find evidence of indirect norm creation. American and Japanese respondents prefer immigrants—not just caregiving immigrants—whose values align with their country's type of valued human capital.     

The visible and the hidden behind migrants’ human capital

The paper explores differences in human capital between the Israel-born and immigrants within the Jorgenson and Fraumeni model. Using a unique ‘imputed education’ method, the study answers whether the immigrants’ level of education, in fact, reflects their human capital. The results show that immigrants during their first years do not work in an occupation that fits their education; this holds their estimated human capital below that of the Israel-born. Over the years, the gap between immigrants and non-immigrants in per-capita human capital contracted from 30 percent to 14 percent on average, or, using the imputation method, from 23 percent to 9 percent. In addition, the gaps between the immigrants and nonimmigrants and those between original education and imputed education contract at higher education levels. Some immigrants were able to find an occupation that matched their education and to integrate into the local job market, and the per-capita human capital of immigrants and nonimmigrants converged.     

Education, credentials, and immigrant earnings

Abstract.  Using 1981 to 2001 Census data, we study how the human capital of immigrants is rewarded in Canada. We distinguish between years of schooling and degrees obtained in order to estimate 'sheepskin' effects – the gain in earnings associated with receipt of a degree, controlling for years of schooling. We find that immigrant years of schooling and immigrant work experience accumulated before arrival is valued much less than Canadian experience of comparable natives. However, for immigrants the increase in earnings associated with completing educational programs is generally higher than that of comparable natives. We provide both signalling and human capital interpretations of this finding.