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Economic Assimilation of Foreign-Born Workers in the United States: An Overlapping Rotating Panel Analysis

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Seik Kim

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Abstract

This paper presents new evidence on whether foreign-born workers assimilate, which we define as the degree to which the wages of foreign-born workers approach those of comparable native-born workers with additional time spent in the United States. The key econometric challenge is to separate wage growth due to assimilation from composition effects. The composition of immigrant population varies over time due to variation in initial skill levels at year of entry and also because of selective return migration. While much of the existing literature relies on cross-section data, we use longitudinal data on native-born and foreign-born populations which allows us to control for initial skill composition. An advantage of using the Current Population Survey (CPS) is that one can construct cross-section samples by ignoring its longitudinal structure. We compare cross-section and panel models of foreign-native gap in wage growth, and the results suggest that analyses based on repeated cross-section studies are biased upward by fixed unobserved heterogeneity. Controlling for this heterogeneity reverses the conventional result of economic assimilation. Overall, we find little evidence of a narrowing of the foreign-native gap in economic performance. New immigrants from Central and South America earn lower wages than natives, and this gap widens with time in the U.S. labor market. The wages of new immigrants from Europe and Asia exceed those of natives and there is no strong evidence of convergence. We account for sample attrition in the presence of nonrandom outmigration and find that our results are robust to panel attrition.

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Paper provided by University of Washington, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number UWEC-2008-19.

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Handle: RePEc:udb:wpaper:uwec-2008-19

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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  5. Wei-Yin Hu, 2000. "Immigrant Earnings Assimilation: Estimates from Longitudinal Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 368-372, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Kristin F. Butcher & John DiNardo, 2002. "The Immigrant and native-born wage distributions: Evidence from United States censuses," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 56(1), pages 97-121, October.
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  12. Borjas, George J, 1985. "Assimilation, Changes in Cohort Quality, and the Earnings of Immigrants," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(4), pages 463-89, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Barth, Erling & Bratsberg, Bernt & Raaum, Oddbjørn, 2003. "Local Unemployment and the Relative Wages of Immigrants: Evidence from the Current Population Surveys," Memorandum 20/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  15. Peracchi, Franco & Welch, Finis, 1995. "How representative are matched cross-sections? Evidence from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 153-179, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Robert J. LaLonde & Robert H. Topel, 1992. "The Assimilation of Immigrants in the U. S. Labor Market," NBER Chapters, in: Immigration and the Workforce: Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas, pages 67-92 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  17. James J. Heckman & Jora Stixrud & Sergio Urzua, 2006. "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 411-482, July. [Downloadable!]
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  18. Borjas, George J, 1995. "The Economic Benefits from Immigration," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 3-22, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Marco Manacorda, 2004. "Can the Scala Mobile Explain the Fall and Rise of Earnings Inequality in Italy? A Semiparametric Analysis, 19771993," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 585-614, July. [Downloadable!]
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  22. David Neumark & William L. Wascher, 2008. "Minimum Wages," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262141027.
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  24. Guillermina Jasso & Mark R. Rosenzweig & James P. Smith, 1998. "The Changing Skills of New Immigrants to the United States: Recent Trends and Their Determinants," NBER Working Papers 6764, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Seik Kim, . "Sample Attrition in the presence of Population Attrition," Working Papers UWEC-2009-02, University of Washington, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  26. David Card & John E. DiNardo, 2002. "Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles," NBER Working Papers 8769, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  27. Christopher R. Bollinger & Barry T. Hirsch, 2005. "Match Bias from Earnings Imputation in the Current Population Survey: The Case of Imperfect Matching," IZA Discussion Papers 1846, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  28. Chunrong Ai & Xiaohong Chen, 2003. "Efficient Estimation of Models with Conditional Moment Restrictions Containing Unknown Functions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1795-1843, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Seik Kim, . "Sample Attrition in the presence of Population Attrition," Working Papers UWEC-2009-02, University of Washington, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. de Walque, Damien, 2008. "Race, immigration, and the U.S. labor marke t: contrasting the outcomes of foreign born and native blacks," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4737, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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