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IMMIGRANT WAGE GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL UPGRADING |
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| Authors: | Rebecca Lessem Carl Sanders |
| Affiliation: | 1. Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.;2. University of Indiana, U.S.A. We are grateful to Holger Sieg and two referees for their comments and suggestions on the article. Thanks to seminar participants at Kansas State University, the London School of Economics, Montana State University, New York University, University College London, University of Virginia, the Society for Economics Dynamics, the Society of Labor Economics, the North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, and the Southern Economics Association for helpful comments. Financial support from the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona is gratefully 3. acknowledged. |
| Abstract: | 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. |
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