Imputation Match Bias in Immigrant Wage Convergence

Although immigrants to the United States earn less at entry than their native-born counterparts, an extensive literature has found that immigrants have faster earnings growth that results in rapid convergence to native-born earnings. However, recent evidence based on U.S. Census data indicates a slowdown in the rate of earnings assimilation. We find that the pace of immigrant wage convergence based on recent data may be understated in the literature as a result of the method used by the census to impute missing information on earnings, which does not use immigration status as a match characteristic. Because both the share of immigrants in the workforce and earnings imputation rates have risen over time, imputation match bias for recent immigrants is more consequential than in earlier periods and may lead to an underestimate of the rate of immigrant wage convergence.     

The fertility contribution of Mexican immigration to the United States

Crucial to the long-term contribution of immigration to a receiving country's population is the extent to which the immigrants reproduce themselves in subsequent, native-born generations. Using conventional projection methodologies, this fertility contribution may be poorly estimated primarily because of problems in projecting the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing. We propose an alternative method that obviates the need to project the number of immigrants by using the full sending-country birth cohort as the risk group to project their receiving-country childbearing. This "sending-country birth cohort" method is found to perform dramatically better than conventional methods when projecting to 1999 from base years both before and after the large increase in inflows of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the late 1980s. Projecting forward from 1999, we estimate a cumulative contribution of Mexican immigrant fertility from the 1980s to 2040 of 36 million births, including 25% to 50% more births after 1995 than are projected using conventional methods.     

The educational enrollment of immigrant youth: a test of the segmented-assimilation hypothesis

An analysis of 1990 census data on the educational enrollment of 15- to 17-year-old immigrants to the United States provides partial support for predictions from both the segmented-assimilation hypothesis and the immigrant optimism hypothesis. Most immigrant adolescents, especially from Asia, are as likely as their native-born peers to be enrolled in high school, or more so. The "at-risk" immigrant youths with above-average levels of nonenrollment that are not reduced with longer exposure to American society are primarily of Hispanic Caribbean origins (from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba). Recent Mexican immigrants who arrived as teenagers have nonenrollment rates over 40%, but Mexican youths who arrived at younger ages are only somewhat less likely to be enrolled in school than are native-born Americans.     

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.     

A comparison of the environmental attitudes, concern, and behaviors of native-born and foreign-born U.S. Residents

This research offers an examination of environmental attitudes, concern, and behaviors among individuals presently living within the context producing contemporary American environmental awareness, but who originated from contexts socially, environmentally, and economically distinct. More specifically, data from the 1993 environmental module of the General Social Survey are used to examine variations in environmental awareness across native-and foreign-born individuals. Results suggest that immigrants living in the U.S. do, indeed, express similarattitudes toward environmental issues as compared to native-born residents. However, shorter-term immigrants (those residing abroad at age 16) in particular express significantly higher levels ofconcern with regard to environmental problems as compared to native-born residents. In addition, shorter-term immigrants are more likely to engage in “environmentally friendly” behaviors as compared to native-born residents, although they appear less likely to have signed an environmentally oriented petition.     

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.     

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.     

Immigrant residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, 1990–2000

This paper examines the extent of spatial assimilation among immigrants of different racial and ethnic origins. We use restricted data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses to calculate the levels of dissimilarity by race and Hispanic origin, nativity, and year of entry, and then run multivariate models to examine these relationships. The findings provide broad support for spatial assimilation theory. Foreign-born Hispanics, Asians, and blacks are more segregated from native-born non-Hispanic whites than are the U.S.-born of these groups. The patterns for Hispanics and Asians can be explained by the average characteristics of the foreign-born that are generally associated with higher levels of segregation, such as lower levels of income, English language ability, and home ownership. We also find that immigrants who have been in the United States for longer periods are generally less segregated than new arrivals, and once again, much of this difference can be attributed to the characteristics of immigrants. However, patterns also vary across groups. Levels of segregation are much higher for black immigrants than for Asian, Hispanic, and white immigrants. In addition, because black immigrants are, on average, of higher socioeconomic status than native-born blacks, such characteristics do not help explain their very high levels of segregation.     

Immigrants and the Spread of Tuberculosis in the United States: A Hidden Cost of Immigration

This panel-data study concerns the incidence of newly diagnosed tuberculosis (TB) in specific U.S. metropolitan areas among immigrants and, in turn, the possible transmission of the disease to the native-born population of these same metropolitan areas. The study includes 50 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas as annual observations, 1993–2007. We find that a 10% increase in the number of high-incidence immigrants results in a 2.87% increase in TB among the foreign-born population, and that a 10% increase in the number of foreign-born TB cases increases the number of new TB cases among the native-born by 1.11%. The study concludes with a benefit/cost analysis of the societal cost of TB and suggests that testing all immigrants for TB would be a cost-effective method to limit the amount of TB that enters U.S. from abroad, thus limiting the transmission to both the foreign- and native-born populations.     

Unhealthy assimilation: Why do immigrants converge to American health status levels?

It is well documented that immigrants are in better health upon arrival in the United States than their American counterparts but that this health advantage erodes over time. We study the potential determinants of this "healthy immigrant effect, " with a particular focus on the tendency of immigrants to converge to unhealthy American BMI levels. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, we find that average female and male immigrants enter the United States with BMIs that are approximately two and five percentage points lower than native-born women and men, respectively. Consistent with the declining health status of immigrants the longer they remain in the United States, we also find that female immigrants almost completely converge to American BMIs within 10 years of arrival, and men close a third of the gap within 15 years.     

The Place of Place: Location and Immigrant Economic Well-being in Canada

In recent years, successive cohorts of immigrants to Canada have experienced a striking level of deterioration in their economic well-being. At the same time, more immigrants than ever before are choosing to live in Montréal, Toronto, or Vancouver, Canada’s three-first-tier or ‘gateway cities’. This paper uses instrumental variable regression techniques to determine the extent to which gateway city clustering is related to immigrant economic well-being. It identifies whether employment status, earnings, and employment suitability would significantly improve if more immigrants chose to live outside of Canada’s three gateway cities. The results suggest that, for the most part, although immigrants do worse than the native-born in gateway cities, they do experience marginally higher earnings than their non-gateway counterparts. Income and unemployment rates are higher for immigrants in gateway cities than they are for the native-born, but the gateway/non-gateway disparity is minimal. Levels of employment mismatch are substantially higher in gateway cities, compared to both the gateway city native-born population, and non-gateway immigrants. An analysis of the data shows that only marginal improvements to economic well-being would result from an increase in non-gateway immigration, and that there are other factors, like race or skin colour, that seem to be more closely linked to labour market success.

Immigration,crime, and incarceration in early twentieth-century america

The major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses. The time series pattern reflects a growing gap between natives and immigrants at older ages, one that was driven by sharp increases in the commitment rates of the native-born, while commitment rates for the foreign-born were remarkably stable.     

Immigrant suicide in Australia,Canada, England and Wales,and the United States

Factors influencing the suicide rates of numerous immigrants in groups in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, and the United States during the period 1959–73 were examined. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated for the origin, immigrant and destination native-born populations using the Canadian native-born age-sex-specific suicide rates as the standard. For males, the foreign-born in England and Wales had the lowest suicide rates and the foreign-born in the United States the highest. For females the variation was smaller, with immigrants in the United States having the lowest rates, and those in Australia the highest. Agespecific suicide rates indicated that relative to the native-born, foreign-born elderly had substantially elevated risks of suicide.     

Ethnic inequalities at the transition from school to work in Belgium and Spain: Discrimination or self-exclusion?

In the labor market, net disadvantages of immigrants, so-called “ethnic penalties”, may stem from rather different sources, among them discrimination by employers or self-exclusion processes. This paper attempts to indirectly disentangle these two mechanisms by studying ethnic penalties from a time-related perspective. Using the EULFS 2000 ad hoc module on school-to-work transitions, a comparative event-history analysis of entry into stable higher status employment is conducted for two European countries, Belgium and Spain. These countries differ considerably in their immigration contexts and patterns of school-to-work transitions, requiring different hypotheses about the relevance of the self-exclusion mechanism. The results show that in Belgium ethnic penalties for non-EU immigrants exist and remain constant irrespective of the length of the job search. In Spain the gap between non-EU immigrants and the native-born is even more pronounced and, importantly, increases significantly over time. This leads to the conclusion that discrimination seems to be relevant in both contexts and that self-exclusion resulting from early abandonment of job search activities is a further important factor in Spain.     

Disability Among Native-born and Foreign-born Blacks in the United States

Using the 5% Public Use Micro Data Sample (PUMS) from the 2000 U.S. census, we examine differences in disability among eight black subgroups distinguished by place of birth and Hispanic ethnicity. We found that all foreign-born subgroups reported lower levels of physical activity limitations and personal care limitations than native-born blacks. Immigrants from Africa reported lowest levels of disability, followed by non-Hispanic immigrants from the Caribbean. Sociodemographic characteristics and timing of immigration explained the differences between these two groups. The foreign-born health advantage was most evident among the least-educated except among immigrants from Europe/Canada, who also reported the highest levels of disability among the foreign-born. Hispanic identification was associated with poorer health among both native-born and foreign-born blacks.     

Immigration and the American century

The full impact of immigration on American society is obscured in policy and academic analyses that focus on the short-term problems of immigrant adjustment. With a longer-term perspective, which includes the socioeconomic roles of the children of immigrants, immigration appears as one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century America. Major waves of immigration create population diversity with new languages and cultures, but over time, while immigrants and their descendants become more "American," the character of American society and culture is transformed. In the early decades of the twentieth century, immigrants and their children were the majority of the workforce in many of the largest industrial cities; in recent decades, the arrival of immigrants and their families has slowed the demographic and economic decline of some American cities. The presence of immigrants probably creates as many jobs for native-born workers as are lost through displacement. Immigrants and their children played an important role in twentieth-century American politics and were influential in the development of American popular culture during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Intermarriage between the descendants of immigrants and old-stock Americans fosters a national identity based on civic participation rather than ancestry.     

An alternative approach to immigration policy: Rationing by skill

Current U.S. immigration policy places a heavy emphasis on kinship ties with a U.S. citizen or resident alien in rationing immigration visas. An alternative policy is to focus on the skills of visa applicants. Immigrants with higher levels of schooling and with skills that are more readily transferable to the U.S. labor market are more productive, as measured by their earnings. A larger proportion of skilled workers in a cohort of immigrants tends to narrow the differences in earnings among skill groups in the native-born population. This reduces income inequality and reduces the use of income transfers by the low-skilled native-born population. More highly-skilled immigrants also make less use of income-contingent transfers. A point-system would be necessary to combine the multidimensional aspects of skill. The adoption of skill-based rationing with a point system in Canada led to an increase in the skill level of the immigrants.     

Immigrants,visible minorities,and self-employment

Historically, self-employment was perceived as a mechanism whereby immigrants could circumvent discriminatory practices in wage labor. More recent research by Borjas in the United States, however, suggests that this view is incorrect. Immigrants, particularly members of visible minorities, are disadvantaged in both the wage labor and the self-employed markets. This pattern has not been replicated in Canada, however; after controlling for several socioeconomic attributes, it is found that foreign-born, self-employed visible minority-group members are not at a disadvantage in relation to the majority population. Foreign-born visible minority group members earn less, however, in the wage labor force. In contrast, it was found that there is no statistically significant difference between native-born visible minority group members and others in the wage labor force, and that native-born, self-employed minority-group members may earn more than others in that market segment.     

The substitutability of labor between immigrants and natives in the Canadian labor market: circa 1995

This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity between Canadian-born and immigrant workers. These are examined by estimating a set of wage equations using a generalized Leontief production function. The paper finds that, in general, there is no displacement of Canadian-born workers by immigrants. Recent immigrants affect the native-born positively, while older immigrants are neither substitute nor complement for natives. However, the effects differ across industries. Overall, the evidence that immigrants harm the opportunities of native-born workers is scant.

Region of Birth and Disability Among Recent U.S. Immigrants: Evidence from the 2000 Census

This study aimed to test the “healthy immigrant” hypothesis and assess health heterogeneity among newly arrived working-age immigrants (18–64 years) from various regions of origin. Using the 5% sample of the 2000 U.S. Census (PUMS), we found that, compared with their native-born counterparts, immigrants from all regions of the world were less likely to report mental disability and physical disability. Immigrants from selected regions of origin were, however, more likely to report work disability. Significant heterogeneity in disabilities exists among immigrants: Those from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia reported the highest risk of mental and physical disability, and those from East Asia reported the lowest risk of physical disability. Furthermore, Mexican immigrants reported the lowest risk of mental disability, and Canadian immigrants reported the lowest risk of work disability. Socioeconomic status and English proficiency partially explained these differences. The health advantage of immigrants decreased with longer U.S. residence.