The Economic Experiences of Refugees in Canada

Don DeVoretz, Sergiy Pivnenko () and Morton Beiser ()
Additional contact information
Sergiy Pivnenko: Simon Fraser University
Morton Beiser: University of Toronto

No 1088, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Canada admits refugees on the basis of compassion and not economic criteria. It is however, important to document the economic successes or failures among Canada’s refugee population in order to understand how post arrival integration policies affect refugee economic performance. This essay examines a set of economic indicators from Canada’s IMDB database to assess the post 1981 Canadian refugee economic experience. With the aid of a standard human capital model we answer a series of economic questions including the length of time required for refugee economic integration, their use of Canada’s social safety net, refugee poverty levels and refugee economic performance vis-à-vis Canada’s family immigrant class. Our main findings are that employed Canadian refugees earn an amount equal to that earned by their family class reference group circa 1980-2001. However, the incidence of social assistance attachment for refugees is substantial and for those refugees who receive any assistance their total income is at the near destitute level.

Keywords: human capital; immigrant earnings; refugees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2004-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published - published in: P. Waxman and V. Colic-Peisker (eds.), Homeland Wanted: Interdisciplinary Perspective on Refugee Settlement in the West, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2004

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1088.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp1088

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 ().