Measuring immigrant wage growth using matched CPS files

Cross-sectional estimates of immigrant wage growth have painted an optimistic picture of the ability of immigrants to adapt to the U.S. labor market: Studies using cross-sectional data have generally found the wage growth of immigrants to exceed that of the native born. This optimistic picture of immigrant economic assimilation was challenged by the important finding that compared to earlier immigrant cohorts, recent immigrants started at much lower wages. As such, the high wage growth of immigrants relative to the native born measured in cross-sectional data may simply be the spurious result of declining immigrant earnings ability. In this paper, we match Current Population Survey samples so that the wages of individual immigrant and native-born men can be followed for one year. We find that the wage growth of immigrants does exceed that of the native born. The general finding of faster immigrant wage growth also holds when imposing the foreign-born geographic distribution upon natives, but not when imposing the native-born geographic distribution on the foreign born—a result consistent with some theories of immigrant assimilation. In each comparison, however, the actual wage growth of immigrants relative to natives is similar to the predictions of cross-sectional regressions. This similarity suggests that either there is no cohort quality bias in the cross-sectional estimates of immigrant wage growth, or that there has been a coincidental increase in immigrant wage growth as the entry wages of immigrants have fallen.     

Ethnic identity, majority norms, and the native–immigrant employment gap

Earlier studies do not agree on whether ethnic identity, i.e., immigrants’ attachment to the home country and the host country, can explain lower employment outcomes among immigrants. This study investigates the relationship between employment and ethnic identity and complements the literature by capturing a novel dimension of ethnic identity: openness to majority norms. Reproducing measures from earlier studies, I find that immigrants’ employment outcomes do not systematically associate with their ethnic identity. However, immigrants who share social norms with the majority experience significantly better employment outcomes, particularly first-generation immigrant women. Furthermore, I show that interethnic differentials in majority norms could account for up to 20 % of the explained part of the employment gap between natives and first-generation immigrants. Those results shed more light on the interethnic employment gap and aspects of immigrants’ identity relevant to economic integration.     

Ethnic diversity and well-being

This paper investigates how ethnic diversity, measured by immigrants’ nationalities, influences the well-being of the host country. Using panel data from Germany from 1998 to 2012, we find a positive effect of ethnic diversity on the well-being of German natives. Our finding is robust to alternative definitions of ethnic diversity and to the non-random selection of natives and immigrants into regions. The positive effect of ethnic diversity is stronger for immigrant groups that are culturally and economically closer to Germany. Consistent with this result, we document the existence of two mechanisms explaining the influence of ethnic diversity on well-being: productivity—as captured by immigrants’ skills and assimilation—and social capital—particularly in relation to the creation of a multicultural environment.     

Making it in America: High school completion by immigrant and native youth

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we find that first-generation youth of Hispanic, Asian, and African heritage obtain more education than their parents, but the second generation and third or higher generations lose ground. Differences in dropout rates by race-ethnicity and immigrant generation are driven by differences in human, cultural, and social capital. Low levels of family human capital, school social capital, and community social capital place the children of immigrants at risk of dropping out. However, cultural capital and immigrant optimism buffer first-generation Hispanic youth and the children of Asian immigrants from the risk of dropping out of high school. While human and social capital resources improve with immigrant generation, cultural capital diminishes.     

Immigration and Natives’ Attitudes towards the Welfare State: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Does immigration reduce natives’ support for the welfare state? Evidence from the European Social Survey (2002/2003) suggests a more qualified relation. For Europe as a whole, there is only weak evidence of a negative association between the perceived presence of immigrants and natives’ support for the welfare state. However, this weak average relationship masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. We distinguish two channels through which immigration could affect natives’ support for the welfare state: a pure dislike of immigrants and concerns about the economic consequences of immigration. We find that natives who hold both negative views react much more negatively to a given perceived share of immigrants than natives who hold neither view. However, there is no clear pattern concerning the relative importance of the two channels. Finally, we find that natives who hold either of these negative views of immigrants tend to be less supportive of the welfare state independently of the perceived presence of immigrants.     

The transmission of women’s fertility, human capital, and work orientation across immigrant generations

Using the 1995–2011 March Current Population Survey and 1970–2000 Census data, we find that the fertility, education, and labor supply of second-generation women (US-born women with at least one foreign-born parent) are significantly positively affected by the immigrant generation’s levels of these variables, with the effect of the fertility and labor supply of women from the mother’s source country generally larger than that of women from the father’s source country and the effect of the education of men from the father’s source country larger than that of women from the mother’s source country. We present some evidence that suggests our findings for fertility and labor supply are due at least in part to intergenerational transmission of gender roles. Transmission rates for immigrant fertility and labor supply between generations are higher than for education, but there is considerable intergenerational assimilation toward native levels for all three of these outcomes.     

Has immigration affected Spanish presidential elections results?

Between 1998 and 2008, the immigrant share in Spain jumped from less than 3 % to more than 13 %. We provide bounds on the effect of immigration inflows on natives’ election outcomes by considering alternative assumptions about nationalized immigrants’ participation rates and voting behavior. We find that Latin-American immigration increased natives’ participation rate and their support for the major leftist party (Socialist Workers’ Party) over the major conservative party (People’s Party (PP)). Conversely, African immigration only increased natives’ support for anti-immigration formations relative to the PP while leaving unaffected their participation rate. The estimated effects are of modest size in all cases. We provide suggestive evidence that economic factors cannot account for such a heterogeneity in the effects of interest by immigrants’ ethnic groups. We argue that Spanish natives’ attitudes towards immigrants are mainly driven by noneconomic factors like dissimilarities between natives and immigrants in language, religion, and race.     

Migration background and educational tracking

Research on immigrants’ educational disadvantages documents substantial immigrant–native achievement gaps in standardized student assessments. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants also receive worse grades and teacher recommendations for secondary school tracks than natives, which cannot be explained by differences in student achievement tests and general intelligence. Second-generation immigrants’ less favorable socioeconomic background largely accounts for this additional disadvantage, suggesting that immigrants are disproportionately affected by prevailing social inequalities at the transition to secondary school. We additionally show that differences in track attendance account for a substantial part of the immigrant–native wage gap in Germany.     

Immigration policy and immigrant quality: empirical evidence from Canada

This paper examines the earnings of foreign-born and native-born men in an attempt to evaluate whether the decline in the quality of Canadian immigrants is related to changes in the country-of-origin mix and the class (type) mix of immigrants. Based on a human capital interpretation, higher quality immigrants are defined as immigrants who have smaller on-entry earnings differentials and have earnings that grow at a faster rate (relative to native-born Canadians). The analysis consists of two parts. The first part is based on individual data on earnings and socio-economic characteristics collected in the 1971 and 1986 Canadian Censuses. Earnings equations are estimated for 16 country-of-origin immigrant groups. These regressions are then used to construct a cohort-specific measure of immigrant quality based on the earnings differential between foreign-born and native-born Canadians. In the second part of the analysis, additional regression equations are estimated, pertaining to the period 1968 to 1985, that relate these Census-based measures of immigrant quality to the country-of-origin and class mix of immigrants. In this analysis, unpublished data, supplied by theDepartment of Employment and Immigration, describing the distribution of immigrants across the three main immigrant classes is used. Overall, the analysis confirms that there has been a sharp secular decline in the quality of Canadian immigrants and suggests that it is related to changes in both the country-of-origin and class mix of immigrants.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Canadian Economics Association and the European Society for Population Economics. The comments of Martin Browning, John Ermisch and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. Of course, all remaining errors and shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the authors.     

Immigrants' welfare use and opportunity for contact with co-ethnics

In this article we examine the relationship between immigrants' welfare use and their social capital, using the 1990 census. We measure community social capital using contact with co-ethnics and co-ethnics' economic inactivity, and examine the use of AFDC and SSI in two subpopulations: single-mother families and elderly units. Major findings are that the effects of social capital differ between immigrant single-mother families and elderly units; the effects of social capital differ between the young-at-arrival elderly and the old-at-arrival elderly; and the process of AFDC use is similar for immigrants and for natives, whereas the process of SSI use is more complicated for immigrants than for natives.     

Do Immigrants Suffer More From Job Loss? Unemployment and Subjective Well-being in Germany

This study asks whether immigrants suffer more from unemployment than German natives. Differences between these groups in pre-unemployment characteristics, the type of the transition into unemployment, and the consequences of this transition suggest that factors intensifying the negative impact of unemployment on subjective well-being are more concentrated in immigrants than in natives. Based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (1990–2014; N = 34,767 persons aged 20 to 64; N = 210,930 person-years), we used fixed-effects models to trace within-person change in subjective well-being across the transition from employment into unemployment and over several years of continued unemployment. Results showed that immigrants’ average declines in subjective well-being exceeded those of natives. Further analyses revealed gender interactions. Among women, declines were smaller and similar among immigrants and natives. Among men, declines were larger and differed between immigrants and natives. Immigrant men showed the largest declines, amounting to one standard deviation of within-person change over time in subjective well-being. Normative, social, and economic factors did not explain these disproportionate declines. We discuss alternative explanations for why immigrant men are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of unemployment in Germany.     

The Patterns of Satisfaction Among Immigrants in Germany

Using the data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper focuses on the analysis of life satisfaction and income satisfaction among immigrants in Germany. The results suggest that it cannot be argued that Germany’s immigrants are, ceteris paribus, more satisfied or less satisfied than natives, since some immigrant groups appear to be more satisfied, while others show lower satisfaction levels relative to natives. Separate estimations for natives and immigrants show that, even though the patterns of satisfaction for the two groups are largely similar, several notable differences emerge. The final goal was to take a closer look at the negative relationship between satisfaction and duration of stay in Germany. After constructing reference groups by the timing of arrival, the negative relationship between income satisfaction and years since migration is reduced substantially. On the other hand, the negative association between duration of stay and life satisfaction is persistent, regardless of the way the reference groups are defined.     

Migration Processes,Familial Characteristics,and Schooling Dropout Among Black Youths

This study uses data from the 2000 U.S. census to examine whether the schooling advantage of black immigrants’ children found in previous studies is robust. According to the results, the advantage associated with having migrant parents is not restricted to the children of immigrants. Black migrant parents, regardless of foreign-born status, have children with favorable schooling outcomes. Such parental-level influences, however, seem stronger among some immigrant groups than among native internal migrants. The study also suggests that the collective advantage of the children of immigrants is driven by positive migrant selectivity. Accordingly, comparisons between the children of native migrants and children in various immigrant groups reveal that the immigrant advantage is not robust. In fact, the results suggest that when immigrant ethnicity is considered, some children of immigrants may be disadvantaged relative to the children of native migrants. Among recent migrants, the children of native internal migrants also have more favorable outcomes than the children of immigrants, although these differences disappear after background factors are controlled. Further, internal-migrant and immigrant households are less likely to have characteristics that adversely affect schooling than nonmigrant households. Unsurprisingly, the children of nonmigrants have the worst outcomes among black youths.     

Just Like in Their Home Country? A Multinational Perspective on Living Arrangements of Older Immigrants in the United States

Older immigrants are more likely to share residence with their adult children and other family members than are U.S.-born older adults. Because socioeconomic factors only partially explain these differences and direct measures of cultural preferences are seldom available, the persistently high rates of intergenerational coresidence among the older foreign-born are often interpreted as driven by cultural preferences and/or a lack of assimilation. To challenge this interpretation, this study investigates the extent to which older immigrants’ living arrangements deviate from those of older adults in their home countries. The analysis combines data on immigrants from the 2008–2012 American Community Survey (ACS) with census data from three major immigrant-sending countries: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam. Despite persistent differences from U.S.-born whites, coresidence in later life is significantly less common than in the sending countries among the older foreign-born who migrated as young adults, and especially among those who migrated as children. The older foreign-born who migrated after age 50, however, are more likely to coreside and less likely to live independently than the older adults in their home countries. The similarity of these patterns across the three immigrant subgroups suggests that the unusually high coresidence among late-life immigrants is driven by U.S. family reunification policy and not simply by cultural influences.     

Parental characteristics and the schooling progress of the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks

In this study, I examine disparities in schooling progress among children born to immigrant and U.S.-born blacks. I find that in one- and two-parent families, children born to black immigrants are less likely to fall behind in school than those born to U.S.-born blacks. In two-parent immigrant families, children born to two immigrant parents have a significant schooling advantage over children born to one immigrant parent. While children born to two immigrant parents in the wealthiest black immigrant families do better in the second generation than in the first, the reverse is observed among children in less wealthy families. These findings contribute in two ways to our understanding of the assimilation processes of children born to black immigrant parents. First, they show that there is a positive association between the number of immigrant parents in a family and children’s schooling performance. Second, they suggest that disparities in the assimilation patterns of the children of black immigrants are a likely product of the interaction between their parental characteristics and the socioeconomic circumstances of their families.     

The impact of immigration on the internal migration of natives and immigrants

In this paper we examine the internal migratory response, by native-born non-Hispanic white men and foreign-born men in the United States, to recent immigration. Our analysis does not support the claim that natives have made a migratory response to recent immigration. Native-born men and foreign-born men were less likely to leave states that received large numbers of immigrants in the 1980s than they were to leave other states, and native-born men had less propensity toward out-migration than did foreign-born men. Out-migration was most likely to be deterred if recent immigrants originated in Europe or Asia. Although native-born non-Hispanic white men showed a tendency toward out-migration if recent immigrants originated in Latin America or the Caribbean, this result was insignificant after we controlled for state economic and regional context.     

Welfare and the Children of Immigrants: Transmission of Dependence or Investment in the Future?

The public concern that immigrant families might be using a disproportionate share of social benefits and transmitting some form of public dependency to their children, combined with the rising levels of immigrants entering the country, fueled the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, which limited public assistance to many immigrant families. This paper uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to explore the association between exposure to welfare and young adult outcomes of high school graduation, college enrollment and labor force participation with a focus on parental nativity status as well as broad country of origin group. Results indicate a persistent negative association between welfare legacy and high school graduation; a negative association that is most pronounced for children of natives. Results also show the largest positive effect of welfare receipt among the most disadvantaged group, the young adult children of immigrants from Mexican and Central American countries. The main finding of this study suggests that the negative impacts of welfare receipt might be lessened and in some cases reversed among the young adults from immigrant families. Such findings challenge the common notion that immigrant families use welfare as a crutch across generations and raise serious concern about U.S. immigration and welfare policies.     

How Durable Are Ethnoracial Segregation and Spatial Disadvantage? Intergenerational Contextual Mobility in France

Building on emerging research into intergenerational contextual mobility, I use longitudinal data from France (1990–2008) to investigate the extent to which second-generation immigrants and the French majority continue to live in similar neighborhood environments during childhood and adulthood. To explore the persistence of ethnoracial segregation and spatial disadvantage, I draw on two measures of neighborhood composition: the immigrant share and the unemployment rate. The analysis explores the individual and contextual factors underpinning intergenerational contextual mobility and variation across immigrant-origin groups. The results document a strong stability of neighborhood environments from childhood to adulthood, especially with regard to the ethnoracial composition of the neighborhood. Individual-level factors are quite weak in accounting for these patterns compared with the characteristics of the city of origin. Moreover, the degree of contextual mobility between childhood and adulthood varies across groups. I find that neighborhood environments are more stable over time for non-European second-generation immigrants. The findings offer important new empirical contributions to the French literature on the residential segregation of immigrants and will more broadly be of interest to scholars of intergenerational spatial and social mobility.     

Hurricane Katrina,a Construction Boom,and a New Labor Force: Latino Immigrants and the New Orleans Construction Industry, 2000 and 2006–2010

Disasters provide opportunities to study the social and economic dimensions of large-scale shifts. Drawn by the surge in demand for low-skill construction workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Latino immigrants represented a substantial share of the New Orleans reconstruction workforce. Scholars, however, have yet to examine how the increased presence of immigrants affected U.S.-born workers in New Orleans. In this analysis, we investigate how the influx of Latino immigrant construction workers shaped the demographic composition and occupational-wage structure of the New Orleans construction sector. Using IPUMS-U.S.A. data from the 2000 and 2006–2010 periods for the New Orleans MSA, we employ logistic and multinomial logistic regression models to analyze a sample of 3,206 foreign-born Latinos, U.S.-born whites, U.S.-born blacks, and others employed in the construction industry. Our analysis indicates that the probability of U.S.-born workers being employed in construction remained stable from the pre- to post-storm period, even as we find evidence of an emerging immigrant employment niche in the post-Katrina construction industry. After the storm, however, Latino immigrants were much more heavily concentrated in occupations at the bottom end of the construction industry’s wage structure, while the relative position of U.S.-born workers improved across the two periods. Together, these findings show that disasters, like other structural shifts, can yield the conditions that produce immigrant employment niches. Moreover, our results indicate that while employment niches provide economic opportunities for the foreign-born, they can also intensify the disadvantage experienced by immigrant workers.     

Insights from longitudinal data on the earnings growth of U.S. foreign-born men

Does the growth in earnings of foreign-born men exceed that of U.S. natives? We use longitudinal data on earnings from a Social Security Administration (SSA) database matched to the 1994 March Current Population Survey to shed new light on this important issue. We also examine the trend over time in the foreign-born men's earnings growth and illuminate the various ways that SSA data can be used to explore the earnings patterns of immigrants.