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Title: Comparative Advantages and Gains from Immigration

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2007

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Abstract: Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. If such immigrants compete with native-born workers of comparable educational attainment for similar jobs, this inflow would depress wages paid to less-educated American workers and increase wages paid to more educated ones. Using individual data on the task intensity of occupations across US states from 1960-2000, however, we show that foreign and native-born workers with low levels of education supply very different occupational skills. Immigrants specialize in manual tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and building. Native-born workers-who have a better understanding of local networks, rules, customs, and language-respond to immigration by specializing in interactive tasks such as coordinating, organizing, and communicating. This increased specialization in tasks complementary to those performed by immigrants implied that wages paid to native workers-even those with little formal education-experienced little decline both in the aggregate and in states with large immigration.

Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228696475

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Peri, Giovanni; Sparber, Chad

Publisher: University of California - Berkeley

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: United States