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The distribution of discrimination in immigrant earnings : evidence from Britain 1974-1993

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  • Kevin Denny
  • Colm Harmon
  • Maurice Roche

Abstract

This paper uses the General Household Survey data for the UK to study earnings discrimination between natives and migrants. The key result is that the main source of discrimination is ethnicity rather than migrant status per se. This paper differs from the conventional focus in studies of earnings discrimination, which focus on mean wage differences. In contrast we study the entire distribution of the wage gap, and incorporate distributionally sensitive measures of the wage gap reflecting different levels of aversion to discrimination. Our results are consistent with previous studies for the UK that find that non-white immigrants are the most widely discriminated in terms of their labour market returns. Moreover this discrimination on the basis of colour is also present in the sub-sample of natives.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Denny & Colm Harmon & Maurice Roche, 1997. "The distribution of discrimination in immigrant earnings : evidence from Britain 1974-1993," Open Access publications 10197/730, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:oapubs:10197/730
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/730
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 1995. "The Wage Curve," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026202375x, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hunt, Priscillia, 2008. "Are immigrants so stuck to the floor that the ceiling is irrelevant?," Economic Research Papers 269787, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    2. Oliver Himmler & Robert Jäckle, 2018. "Literacy and the Migrant–Native Wage Gap," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 592-625, September.
    3. O B Bodvarsson & John Sessions, 2010. "Nationality Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Test," Department of Economics Working Papers 08/10, University of Bath, Department of Economics.
    4. Coral Río & Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó, 2011. "The measurement of gender wage discrimination: the distributional approach revisited," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 57-86, March.
    5. Nicoletti, Cheti & Platt, Lucinda & Longhi, Simonetta, 2009. "Decomposing pay gaps across the wage distribution: investigating inequalities of ethno-religious groups and disabled people," ISER Working Paper Series 2009-31, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    6. Priscillia Hunt, 2012. "From the bottom to the top: a more complete picture of the immigrant-native wage gap in Britain," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-18, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wages--Alien labor; Discrimination in employment--Great Britain; Wages--Great Britain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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