On the relative gains to immigration: a comparison of the labour market position of Indians in the USA, the UK and India

Augustin de Coulon and Jonathan Wadsworth

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: While most studies of the decision to immigrate focus on the absolute income differences between countries, we argue that relative change in purchasing power or status, as captured by an individual’s ranking in the wage distribution, may also be important. This will in turn be influenced by differential levels of supply, demand and migration costs across the skill distribution and across countries. Using data on Indian immigrants in the United States and the UK matched to comparable data on individuals who remained in India, we show that the average Indian immigrant will experience a fall in their relative ranking in the wage distribution compared to the position they would have achieved had they remained in the origin country. The fall in relative rankings is larger for immigrants to the UK than to the US, and largest of all for those with intermediate skills.

Keywords: immigration; wages; relative ranking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J61 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2008-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19634/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Relative Gains to Immigration: A Comparison of the Labour Market Position of Indians in the USA, the UK and India (2008)
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:ehl:lserod:19634

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().