Immigration and Social Mobility

Maria Hoen, Simen Markussen and Knut Røed ()

No 11904, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using Norwegian administrative data, we examine how exposure to immigration over the past decades has affected natives' relative prime age labor market outcomes by social class background. Social class is established on the basis of parents' earnings rank. By exploiting variation in immigration patterns over time across commuting zones, we find that immigration from low†income countries has reduced social mobility and thus steepened the social gradient in natives' labor market outcomes, whereas immigration from high†income countries has leveled it. Given the large inflow of immigrants from low-income countries to Norway since the early 1990s, this can explain a considerable part of the relative decline in economic performance among natives with lower class background, and also rationalize the apparent polarization of sentiments toward immigration.

Keywords: immigration; intergenerational mobilty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published as 'Immigration and economic mobility' in: Journal of Population Economics, 2022, 35, 1589 -1630

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11904.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:dp11904

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 ().