Technological Change, Occupational Tasks and Declining Immigrant Outcomes: Implications for Earnings and Income Inequality in Canada

Casey Warman and Christopher Worswick

No 21307, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to Canada are analyzed. The growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non-routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education. Controlling for education, we find a pronounced cross-arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross-cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross-cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements. The immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall Canadian earnings inequality.

JEL-codes: J15 J24 J31 J61 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-lma, nep-ltv and nep-mig
Note: LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published as Casey Warman & Christopher Worswick, 2015. "Technological change, occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes: Implications for earnings and income inequality in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 48(2), pages 736-772, May.
Published as Casey Warman & Christopher Worswick, 2015. "Technological change, occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes: Implications for earnings and income inequality in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, vol 48(2), pages 736-772.

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