Estimating the wage premia of refugee immigrants: Lessons from Sweden

Christopher Baum, Hans Lööf (), Andreas Stephan and Klaus Zimmermann ()

No 963, Boston College Working Papers in Economics from Boston College Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the wage earnings of fully-employed refugee immigrants in Sweden. Using administrative employer-employee data from 1990 onward, approximately 100,000 refugee immigrants who arrived between 1980 and 1996 and were granted asylum are compared to a matched sample of native-born workers. Employing recentered influence function (RIF) quantile regressions to wage earnings for the period 2011–2015, the occupational task-based Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition approach shows that refugees perform better than natives at the median wage, controlling for individual and firm characteristics. This overperformance is due to female refugee immigrants. Given their characteristics, refugee immigrant females perform better than native females across all occupational tasks studied, including non-routine cognitive tasks. A notable similarity of the wage premium exists among various refugee groups, suggesting that cultural differences and the length of time spent in the host country do not have a major ipract.

Keywords: refugees; wage earnings gap; occupational sorting; employer-employee data; correlated random effects model; Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 F22 J24 J6 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10-10, Revised 2024-05-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
Note: Previously circulated as "Productivity of refugee workers and implications for innovation and growth"
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming, Industrial and Labor Relations Review

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Related works:
Journal Article: Estimating the Wage Premia of Refugee Immigrants: Lessons from Sweden (2024)
Working Paper: Estimating the wage premia of refugee immigrants: Lessons from Sweden (2024)
Working Paper: Estimating the Wage Premia of Refugee Immigrants: Lessons from Sweden (2024)
Working Paper: Estimating the wage premia of refugee immigrants: Lessons from Sweden (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boc:bocoec:963

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