Most immigrants begin their labor market trajectory in the US with lower earnings than natives with comparable levels of skills and work experience. Whether and how fast immigrants catch up to natives is critical for their own wellbeing and that of their children as numerous studies have found a strong relation between low parental income and a variety of negative outcomes for children, including worse health, greater likelihood of dropping out of school, higher risk of teenage pregnancy, and lower emotional and cognitive development. Our knowledge of the economic progress of immigrants comes mostly from studies using a synthetic cohort approach whereby arrival cohorts are followed across decennial censuses. This approach suffers from well- known estimation problems. Chief among them is that repeated cross sections necessarily exclude individuals who return to their countries of origin between censuses, and also undercount circular migrants. The exclusion of circular and return migrants could lead to an overestimation of immigrants? ability to narrow the earnings gap with natives over time in the repeated cross-sectional approach. Our knowledge of the earnings assimilation of immigrants is also severely outdated as it is largely based on information from immigrants arriving in the 1980s or earlier. In this study we will examine immigrant men?s earnings trajectories, and measure the extent to which the earnings gap with natives narrows over time, using a unique dataset that links respondents of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to their longitudinal earnings from individual tax records. We will follow immigrants? earnings for up to 20 years after arrival and compare their earnings trajectory to that of similarly-qualified natives. This longitudinal approach offers better estimates of the economic assimilation of foreign-born individuals over time than an approach using synthetic cohorts based on repeated cross sections. We will explore differences in the earnings growth trajectories of immigrants according to their level of education, country of origin, and racial and ethnic identification. Examining differences in the earnings assimilation of immigrants of different race and ethnicity is important because previous research has suggested that minority immigrants face greater obstacles in assimilating into the US labor market. We will also compare the earnings trajectories of different immigrant arrival cohorts to test the argument that immigrants are declining in their labor market ?quality? over time. Finally, we will use fixed-effects models to control for unobserved differences in immigrant selectivity, thereby isolating insofar as possible the effect of the context of reception on immigrants? earnings growth.
New project narrative: Despite their lower socioeconomic status, on many measures, immigrants experience better health than U.S. natives; this is called the ?immigrant health paradox.? However, most immigrant groups experience increases in their socioeconomic status over their time in the United States and, because of the lack of individual-level longitudinal data on immigrants? earnings, this upward trajectory has never been adequately taken into account. Immigrants? ability to succeed in the labor market and achieve economic parity with natives significantly impacts their own health and well-being and that of their children, most of whom are U.S.-born citizens. Drawing on a unique dataset that links respondents from a nationally-representative survey to their earnings from individual tax records, this project will provide the most rigorous and most up-to-date estimates of the economic assimilation of foreign-born individuals ever produced.
| Villarreal, Andrés; Tamborini, Christopher R (2018) Immigrants' Economic Assimilation: Evidence from Longitudinal Earnings Records. Am Sociol Rev 83:686-715 |
