How the Earnings Growth of U.S. Immigrants Was Underestimated

Harriet Duleep, Xingfei Liu and Mark Regets

No 820, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Two radically different descriptions of immigrant earnings trajectories in the U.S. have emerged. One asserts that immigrant men following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act have low initial earnings and high earnings growth. Another asserts that post-1965 immigrants have low initial earnings and low earnings growth. We describe the methodological issues that create this divide and show that low earnings growth becomes high earnings growth when immigrants are followed from their initial years in the U.S., earnings growth is allowed to vary with entry earnings, and-when following cohorts instead of individuals-sample restrictions commonly used by labor economists are avoided.

Keywords: Sample restrictions; immigrant earning growth; human capital investment; the U.S. census (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 J1 J2 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:820

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