The balance of care: Trends in the wages and employment of immigrant nurses in the US between 1990 and 2000

Abstract

Recently, the transnational migration of nurses from developing countries to developed countries has received heightened attention from policymakers, health-care practitioners, and the media. In this article, the 1990 and 2000 Census Public Use Micro Survey (PUMS) data files are used to address the issue of nurse migration. I examine changes in the number, location, wages, countries of origin, and other economic and demographic variables for foreign-born nurses and nurses' aides and US born nurses and nurses' aides over the time period 1990 to 2000. I find that foreign-born nurses and nurses' aides increasingly come from developing countries and, specifically, from Africa. This raises important ethical issues, as Africa faces a severe shortage of nurses in the context of the AIDS crisis. Foreign-born nurses are shown to have higher levels of education and higher levels of labor force attachment than US-born nurses.