Full Citation

Title: Immigrants and the US Wage Distribution

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Since the 1980s the stock of immigrants to the US has been rapidly increasing potentially disrupting labor markets across the country. A large body of literature estimates the relative wage impact of immigration on high-and low-skill workers, but we know much less about how these effects map onto changes of the earnings structure. I begin with descriptively documenting the evolution of foreign-born workers in the natives' wage distribution, showing that, over time, they have become increasingly over-represented in the very bottom. I then undertake two distinct empirical approaches in deepening our understanding of the way foreign-born shape the earnings structure. First, I construct a counterfactual wage distribution with lower immigration levels and estimate reduced-form quantile treatment effects. Second, I build and estimate a standard theoretical model featuring Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) technology and skill types stratified across wage deciles. Both analyses uncover similar monotone effects: a one percentage point increase in the share of foreign-born leads to a 0.1-0.2 (0.2-0.3) percent wage decrease (increase) in the bottom (top) decile and asserts no significant pressure in the middle.

Url: https://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/US-2050-Immigrants-and-the-US-Wage-Distribution.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Yasenov, Vasil I

Publisher: UC Berkeley

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Other

Countries: