English Deficiency and the Native-Immigrant Wage Gap

Alfonso Miranda and Yu Zhu

Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: We focus on the effect of English deficiency on the native-immigrant wage gap for employees in the UK using the first wave of the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (Understanding Society). We show that the wage gap is robust to controls for age, region of residence, educational attainment and ethnicity, particularly for men. 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)
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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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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