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The Importance of Heterogeneity When Examining Immigrant Education-Occupation Mismatch: Evidence from New Zealand

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  • Poot, Jacques

    () (University of Waikato)

  • Stillman, Steven

    () (University of Otago)

Abstract

Many immigrants are overqualified in their first job after arrival in the host country. Education-occupation mismatch can affect the economic integration of immigrants and the returns to education and experience. The extent of this problem has been measured in recent years by means of micro level data in Australia, North America and Europe. However, these papers have typically ignored the importance of allowing for heterogeneity, in particular by qualification level and years in the destination country. In this paper, we use micro data from the 1996, 2001 and 2006 New Zealand censuses to examine differences between each migrant’s actual years of education and the estimated typical years of education in the narrowly defined occupation in which they work. We find that migrants living in New Zealand for less than 5 years are on average overeducated, while earlier migrants are on average undereducated. However, once accounting for heterogeneity, we find that both overeducated and undereducated migrants become, with increasing years of residence in New Zealand, more similar to comparable native born. Convergence from overeducation is stronger than from undereducation.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 5211.

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Length: 39 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5211

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Keywords: immigration; occupation; skill transferability; job-worker mismatch; discrimination; New Zealand;

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References

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  1. Fernandez, Cristina & Ortega, Carolina, 2006. "Labour market assimilation of immigrants in Spain: employment at the expense of bad job-matches?," IESE Research Papers D/644, IESE Business School.
  2. Alan Barrett & David Duffy, 2007. "Are Ireland's Immigrants Integrating into its Labour Market?," Papers WP199, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
  3. Chiswick, Barry R. & Miller, Paul W., 2008. "Why is the payoff to schooling smaller for immigrants?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1317-1340, December.
  4. Mayda, Anna Maria, 2004. "Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants," IZA Discussion Papers 1115, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  5. Sattinger, Michael, 1993. "Assignment Models of the Distribution of Earnings," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 831-80, June.
  6. Lindley, Joanne, 2009. "The over-education of UK immigrants and minority ethnic groups: Evidence from the Labour Force Survey," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 80-89, February.
  7. Lewis Evans & Arthur Grimes & Bryce Wilkinson, 1996. "Economic Reform in New Zealand 1984-95: The Pursuit of Efficiency," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 1856-1902, December.
  8. Chiswick, Barry R. & Miller, Paul W., 2009. "The international transferability of immigrants' human capital," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 162-169, April.
  9. Papps, Kerry L. & Newell, James O., 2002. "Identifying Functional Labour Market Areas in New Zealand: A Reconnaissance Study Using Travel-to-Work Data," IZA Discussion Papers 443, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
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Cited by:
  1. Piracha, Matloob & Vadean, Florin, 2012. "Migrant Educational Mismatch and the Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 6414, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Rob Hodgson & Jacques Poot, 2011. "New Zealand Research on the Economic Impacts of Immigration 2005-2010: Synthesis and Research Agenda," CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1104, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London.

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