Labor market assimilation and the self-employment decision of immigrant entrepreneurs

Magnus Lofstrom

Journal of Population Economics, 2002, vol. 15, issue 1, 83-114

Abstract: This paper uses data from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Censuses to study labor market assimilation of self-employed immigrants. Separate earnings functions for the self-employed and wage/salary workers are estimated. To control for endogenous sorting into the sectors, models of the self-employment decision are estimated. Self-employed immigrants are found to do substantially better in the labor market than wage/salary immigrants. Earnings of self-employed immigrants are predicted to converge with natives' wage/salary earnings at about age 30 and natives' self-employed earnings at about age 40. Including the self-employed in the sample reduces the immigrant-native earnings gap by, on average, 14%.

Keywords: Immigration; assimilation; self-employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J23 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-01-24
Note: Received: 10 November 1999/Accepted: 3 August 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (96)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00148/papers/2015001/20150083.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

Related works:
Working Paper: Labor Market Assimilation and the Self-Employment Decision of Immigrant Entrepreneurs (1999)
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:spr:jopoec:v:15:y:2002:i:1:p:83-114

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().