The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain

Marco Manacorda (), Alan Manning () and Jonathan Wadsworth
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Marco Manacorda: Queen Mary, University of London, CEP, London School of Economics and CEPR

No 2352, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: the wages of native-born workers in the UK have failed to find any significant effect. This is something of a puzzle since Card and Lemieux, (2001) have shown that changes in the relative supply of educated natives do seem to have measurable effects on the wage structure. This paper offers a resolution of this puzzle – natives and immigrants are imperfect substitutes, so that an increase in immigration reduces the wages of immigrants relative to natives. We show this using a pooled time series of British cross-sectional micro data of observations on male wages and employment from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. This lack of substitution also means that there is little discernable effect of increased immigration on the wages of native-born workers, but that the only sizeable effect of increased immigration is on the wages of those immigrants who are already here.

Keywords: wages; wage inequality; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2006-10
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain (2006)
Working Paper: The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain (2006)
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