Immigrants' and Natives' Unemployment-risk: Productivity Differentials or Discrimination?Mahmood Arai () and
Roger Vilhelmsson
No 169, Working Paper Series from Trade Union Institute for Economic Research Abstract: Studying the unemployment risk during 1992 to 1995 for a sample of employees in 1991, we find that immigrants from the non-European countries run a risk of unemployment that is twice the corresponding risk for the native workers. There exist substantial unemployment-risk differentials taking into account employees’ demographic and human capital characteristics, the wage-rate in 1991 and systematic sorting of workers across establishments associated with varying unemployment risks. Exaggerating beyond all reasonable limits, the ability differentials (measured in school grades and IQ-tests) between immigrants and natives fails to explain the differences between immigrants and natives in unemployment risks. Our simulations indicate that the observed unemployment-risk differentials between native and non-European workers correspond to ability differentials that are at least as large as the whole range of IQ-scores. Our conclusion is that discriminatory behavior and stereotype beliefs must be involved. Furthermore, we report results indicating that the existing income-gap between immigrants and natives in Sweden is almost entirely due to unequal employment opportunities. Keywords: Immigration; Unemployment; Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Industrial Relations, 2004, pages 690-99. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:fiefwp:0169 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Paper Series from Trade Union Institute for Economic Research |
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