| Title: |
Decomposing the Native-Immigrant Wage Gap in the United States |
| Authors: |
Rebecca Lessem; Carl S; Jel Codes J |
| Contributors: |
The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives |
| Source: |
http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/workshops/micro/micropaper14/micro0708.pdf. |
| Publication Year: |
2014 |
| Collection: |
CiteSeerX |
| Description: |
Immigrant workers in the United States earn significantly lower wages than observably similar natives. We study the wage path of immigrants on order to understand this gap, focus-ing on the contributions of two mechanisms for wage growth. First, the value of labor market experience may differ for natives and immigrants. Second, it may take time for new immi-grants to be matched with their optimal occupation after moving to the US. To separate these two forces, we create a parsimonious model of human capital accumulation and job search which we estimate using representative data on recent immigrants from the New Immigrant Survey. Data on each person’s occupation in their home country, which is not available in datasets previously used to study immigrant wage assimilation, allows us to compare immi-grants who come from similar occupations but have different career paths in the US. Reduced form evidence shows that both returns to experience and job search drive immigrant wage growth. Counterfactuals show that placing immigrants immediately in their long-run occupa-tions reduces the initial native-immigrant wage gap by about 7%. |
| Document Type: |
text |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.684.5218 |
| Availability: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.684.5218; http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/workshops/micro/micropaper14/micro0708.pdf |
| Rights: |
Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it. |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.E2CF703F |
| Database: |
BASE |