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Risky Working Conditions: An Immigrant Trap or an Income Effect?

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Abstract

Immigrants’ income has been proved to converge to the average native income level with years of residence in the host country. This income assimilation effect is surprisingly not associated with a health improvement. Some emerging studies point towards the role of working conditions as a driver of the counterfactual relation between immigrants’ health and income. Using French data, we first show that, consistently with Viscusi (1978), working conditions are a normal good. An increase in 10% in non-earned income is associated with a decrease by 0.85% in professional injuries and by more than 3.2% in disabilities induced by professional illnesses. Second, we find that while immigrants bear in average worse working conditions than natives, this divergence results from an income divergence effect since for an equivalent non-earned income level there are no significant differences in working conditions between natives and immigrants. Income assimilation of immigrants is associated with an assimilation in working conditions. We conclude then that bad working conditions cannot be blamed for the degradation of immigrants’ health with years of residence in the host country.

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  • Eva Moreno-Galbis, 2019. "Risky Working Conditions: An Immigrant Trap or an Income Effect?," AMSE Working Papers 1908, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    • Handle: RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1908
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    immigrants; working conditions; income;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions

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