Gender, Comparative Advantage and Labor Market Activity in Immigrant Families

Deborah Cobb-Clark and Thomas Crossley ()

Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: The family investment hypothesis that credit-constrained immigrant families adopt a household strategy for financing post-migration human capital investment in which the partner with albour market comparative advantage engages ininvestment activities and the other partner undertakes labor market activities which finance current consumption. We assess this hypothesis by focussing on two issues: first, the extent to which the specialization in the investing versus financing role is based on comparative advantage versus gender, and the second, the extent to which credit constraints offer a potential explanation for observed behaviour. Using a unique new Australian data set we find that comparative advantage and gender can be separately identified in migrating families. We find some support for the family investment hypothesis among traditional families (where labor market comparative advantage resides with the male partner) but not among nontraditional families.

JEL-codes: D10 J22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp46.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp46.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp46.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender, Comparative Advantage and Labour Market Activity in Immigrant Families (2001)
Working Paper: Gender, Comparative Advantage and Labor Market Activity in Immigrant Families (2001)
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:mcm:cilnwp:46

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers from McMaster University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().