Qualifications, Discrimination, or Assimilation? An Extended Framework for Analysing Immigrant Wage Gaps

Helena Nielsen, Michael Rosholm, Nina Smith and Leif Husted ()
Additional contact information
Leif Husted: KORA - Danish Institute for Local and Regional Government Research
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Leif Jensen

No 365, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze immigrant wage gaps and propose an extension of the traditional wage decomposition technique, which is a synthesis from two strains of literature on ethnic/immigrant wage differences, namely the ‘assimilation literature’ and the ‘discrimination literature’. We estimate separate wage equations for natives and a number of immigrant groups using panel data sample selection models. Based on the estimations, we find that the immigrant wage gap is caused by a lack of qualifications and incomplete assimilation, and that a large fraction of that gap would disappear if only immigrants could find employment and thus accumulate work experience.

Keywords: immigrants; Wage assimilation; panel data sample selection model; wage gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J16 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2001-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published - published in: Empirical Economics, 2004, 29 (4), 855-885

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp365.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Qualifications, discrimination, or assimilation? An extended framework for analysing immigrant wage gaps (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp365

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().