Do better pre-migration skills accelerate immigrants' wage assimilation?

Boris Hirsch, Elke Jahn, Ott Toomet and Daniela Hochfellner

Labour Economics, 2014, vol. 30, issue C, 212-222

Abstract: This paper analyzes wage assimilation of ethnic German immigrants to Germany using unique administrative data that include an administrative estimate of immigrants' expected wage in Germany at the time of migration. We find that a 10% higher wage potential translates into a 1.6% higher wage in Germany when also controlling for educational attainment, thus pointing at partial transferability of pre-migration skills to the host country's labor market. We also document that wage assimilation is significantly accelerated for immigrants with higher wage potentials. Our results are both in line with complementarities between pre-migration skills and host country-specific human capital and a U-shaped pattern of immigrants' job mobility with initial downgrading and subsequent upgrading.

Keywords: Migration; Labor market assimilation; Ethnic Germans; Transferability of human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:30:y:2014:i:c:p:212-222

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2014.04.004

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