Literacy and the Migrant-Native Wage Gap

Oliver Himmler and Robert Jaeckle
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Robert Jäckle

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Being able to read and write is one of the most important skills in modern economies. Literacy frequently is a prerequisite for employment and its relevance for productivity and wages is magnified by the fact that it is only through literacy that many other skills become usable. More so than for natives, this argument applies to migrants: even those with high levels of human capital acquired in the country of origin often have it rendered worthless by the absence of literacy in the host country language. Using novel data from a large-scale German adult literacy test (LEO - level-one study), we investigate the determinants of literacy and show that migrants have systematically lower language skills than natives. We find that any observed raw employment and wage gaps between natives and migrants can be fully explained by these differences.

Keywords: Literacy; Migration; Employment; Earnings; Wage Gap; Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/58812/1/MPRA_paper_58812.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Literacy and the Migrant–Native Wage Gap (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:58812

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