English Deficiency and the Native-Immigrant Wage Gap

Alfonso Miranda and Yu Zhu

No 7019, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We focus on the effect of English deficiency on the native-immigrant wage gap for male employees in the UK using the first wave of the UK Household Longitudinal Survey. We show that the wage gap is robust to controls for age, region of residence, educational attainment and ethnicity. However, English as Additional Language (EAL) is capable of explaining virtually all the remaining wage gap between natives and immigrants. Using the interaction of language of country of birth and age-at-arrival as instrument, we find strong evidence of a causal effect of EAL on the native-immigrant wage gap.

Keywords: native-immigrant wage gap; English as Additional Language (EAL); age-at-arrival (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - revised version published in: Economics Letters, 2013, 118 (1), 38-41

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Related works:
Journal Article: English deficiency and the native–immigrant wage gap (2013)
Working Paper: English Deficiency and the Native-Immigrant Wage Gap (2012)
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