Explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of Canada's immigrant cohorts, 1966 – 2000

Abstract.  Using the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, and 2001 Canadian Censuses, we explore causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of successive cohorts of immigrant men and women. Roughly one‐third of the deterioration is explained by compositional shifts in language ability and region of birth. We find no evidence of a decline in the returns to foreign education for either immigrant men or immigrant women but a definite deterioration in the returns to foreign labour market experience, most strongly among men from non‐traditional source countries. We can explain roughly two‐thirds of the male and one‐half of the female deterioration without any reference to entry labour market conditions. When we also account for entry conditions, our results suggest Canada's immigrants of the late 1990s would otherwise have enjoyed entry earnings equal to or higher than their counterparts of the 1960s.     

The visible minority earnings gap across generations of Canadians

Abstract To what extent the earnings gaps facing Canada’s visible minorities reflect discrimination is a question of tremendous policy interest. This paper argues that failing to account for the limited Canadian ancestry of visible minorities overestimates discrimination if immigrant assimilation is an intergenerational process. Using the 2001 and 2006 Canadian Censuses, weekly earnings, conditional on a rich set of worker and job characteristics, are compared with child immigrant, second‐, and third‐and‐higher‐generation Canadian men. The results reveal a tendency for earnings to increase across subsequent generations of visible minority, but not white, men. Though the pattern is strongest between the first and second generation, for black men it is also evident between the Canadian born with and without a Canadian‐born parent. Despite this progress, for most visible minority groups earnings gaps are identified even among third‐and‐higher‐generation Canadians.     

Why do immigrant workers in Australia perform better than those in Canada? Is it the immigrants or their labour markets?

Research comparing the labour market performance of recent cohorts of immigrants to Australia and Canada points to superior employment and earnings outcomes in Australia. Examining Australian and Canadian Census data between 1986 and 2006, we find that this performance advantage is not driven by differences in broader labour market conditions affecting all new labour market entrants. Rather, the results from comparing immigrants from a common source country – either the U.K., India, or China – suggest that Australian immigrants perform better, particularly in average earnings, primarily because of a different source country distribution. Moreover, the recent tightening of Australian selection policy, most notably its use of mandatory pre‐migration English‐language testing, appears to be having an effect, primarily by further shifting the source country distribution of immigrants away from non‐English‐speaking source countries, rather than in identifying higher‐quality migrants within source countries.     

The influence of measurement error and unobserved heterogeneity in estimating immigrant returns to foreign and host-country sources of human capital

Studies which estimate separate returns to foreign and host-country sources of human capital have burgeoned in the immigration literature in recent years. In estimating separate returns, analysts are typically forced to make strong assumptions about the timing and exogeneity of human capital investments. Using a particularly rich longitudinal Canadian data source, we consider to what extent the findings of this literature may be driven by biases arising from errors in measuring foreign and host-country sources of human capital and the endogeneity of post-migration schooling and work experience. Our main finding is that the results of the current literature by and large do not appear to be driven by the assumptions needed to estimate separate returns using the standard data sources available.     

The Effect of Labor Relations Laws on Unionization Rates within the Labor Force: Evidence from the Canadian Provinces

We examine the potential of labor‐relations reforms to address wage inequality by relating an index of the favorableness to unions of Canadian provincial labor‐relations laws to changes in industry, occupation, education, and gender‐specific provincial unionization rates. While we find some evidence of larger unionization gains among high‐school–educated workers, the differences across groups are small and in some cases suggest larger gains among professionals. Overall, the results suggest a limited potential for reforms in labor‐relations laws to mitigate growing labor‐market inequality.     

The power of collaborative deliberation in stakeholder dialogue seminars

This paper quantifies the added value of using collaborative deliberation as an engagement element in a stakeholder dialogue seminar arranged over 3 days in Norway in 2015 with a wide range of national, regional and local stakeholders. The topic addressed was the possible impacts in western Norway from a hypothetical nuclear accident in the UK. The first day included information provision while the following 2 days were devoted to collaborative deliberation on the issue. Two questionnaire surveys were used to measure the degree of learning, networking, involvement and problem solving reported by the participants after the first day and the third day. The results from the surveys clearly suggest that collaborative deliberation gave an added value compared to information provision alone in our stakeholder dialogue seminar.     

The impact of Sunday shopping on employment and hours of work in the retail industry: Evidence from Canada

Between 1980 and 1998 every Canadian province passed legislation that in some way relaxed restrictions on Sunday shopping. This study exploits the variation in deregulation dates between provinces to identify how retail employers adjust employment and hours of work when deciding to open on Sundays. A major complication of this analysis is to first determine for which provinces the deregulation dates are useful indicators of increases in Sunday store openings. This paper uses a unique trading-day regression approach to identify these provinces and then uses aggregate data from the selected provinces to estimate a simple dynamic labour demand model that allows employment and hours to be imperfect substitutes in production. The results suggest that retailers’ needs for Sunday labour were disproportionately satisfied through increases in employment levels. Comparison of the estimates at three levels of the retail industry suggests that the employment and hours gains were larger among general merchandise stores than among more specialized retail establishments and relatively modest at the aggregate retail industry level. In addition, despite evidence of an immediate shortfall in the employment level below the long-run optimal level, the results suggest that firms were unable to compensate by temporarily increasing the hours of their existing employees.