Immigrant assimilation and male labor market inequality

Patrick L Mason

doi:10.1186/s40176-016-0065-z

Abstract

Abstract At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, foreign-born persons were less than 1 % of the African-American population (Kent, Popul Bull, 62:4, 2007). Today, 16 % of America’s African diaspora workforce consists of first- or second-generation immigrants and 4 % is Hispanic. Intergenerational improvement is an important source of wage convergence of black immigrants. Unskilled immigrants who arrive in the USA as children and adolescents experience substantial wage assimilation, especially Caribbean-English and African-English immigrants. But both unskilled immigrants arriving as adults and all skilled immigrants fail to catch up to the wage status of either native-born whites or native-born African-Americans. After living in the USA for 9–15 years, first-generation black immigrants will have wage penalties at least as large as native-born African-Americans. The immigration process selects black immigrants who have or who would have achieved middle income or higher status in their country of origin. As such, black immigrants tend to have above average observable characteristics. Nevertheless, black immigrants do not obtain wage assimilation equal to native-born non-Hispanic white male workers. JEL Classification: J15, J31, J61, J62, J7

Highlights

At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, foreign-born persons were less than 1 % of the African-American population (Kent, 2007)
16 % of America’s African diaspora workforce consists of first- or second-generation immigrants and 4 % is Hispanic. (See Table 1.) The extant literature argues that black immigrant labor market assimilation is governed by positive selection in the immigration process and lateral class mobility of immigrants
This study empirically describes wage assimilation among black immigrants, with a particular focus on age of arrival effects and their impact on racial wage differentials

Summary

Introduction

At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, foreign-born persons were less than 1 % of the African-American population (Kent, 2007). The most recent research argues that the first-generation Caribbean-English black male immigrants who arrived in the USA between 1970 and 1989 and during 1995–1999 overtake the income of native-born African-American males within 11–15 years of living in the USA (Hamilton, 2014). (The 1985–1989 cohort requires 16–20 years, but they have the largest penalty on arrival in the USA (0.355 log points).) No other black male immigrant ethnic group catches up with native-born African-American males. Persons who arrive in the USA prior to 26 years of age have dramatically lower wage penalties than older arriving immigrants of the same cohort and ancestral group and are the only black immigrants able to catch up with and overtake native-born non-Hispanic black males workers—but not native-born Hispanic black male workers or same-group second-generation black male immigrants.

Statistical model Consider the following assimilation equation

Results

Conclusions