The Portability of New Immigrants' Human Capital: Language, Education, and Occupational Skills

Casey Warman, Arthur Sweetman and Gustave Goldmann

Canadian Public Policy, 2015, vol. 41, issue s1, 64-79

Abstract: Given the declining returns to pre-migration labour market experience, human capital portability is explored for new immigrants focusing on pre- and post-immigration occupational matching, and its interactions with education and language. New immigrants who match occupations obtain an earnings premium, but surprisingly, on average, even they obtain no return to their pre-migration labour market experience. Only males with substantial English proficiency who also match occupations receive any return to such experience. Moreover, occupational matching and English skills are also seen to interact with education in an unexpected way. For both sexes, only those with a match and/or strong English proficiency obtain a positive return to their schooling. The commonly observed low rate of return to education for new immigrants appears to be a combination of zero for some and a large return for others. Of the varieties of human capital studied, only English language skills are universally rewarded.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2013-055 (text/html)
access restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:cpp:issued:v:41:y:2015:i:s1:p:64-79

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).