Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/177110 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 11306
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Although immigrants to the United States earn less at entry than their native-born counterparts, an extensive literature finds that immigrants have faster earnings growth that results in rapid convergence to native-born earnings. However, recent evidence based on Census data indicates a slowdown in the rate of earnings assimilation. We find that the pace of immigrant wage convergence based on recent data may be understated in the literature due to the method used by the Census to impute missing information on earnings, which does not use immigration status as a match characteristic. Because both the share of immigrants in the workforce and earnings imputation rates have risen over time, imputation match bias for recent immigrants is more consequential than in earlier periods and may lead to an underestimate of the rate of immigrant wage convergence.
Subjects: 
immigrant assimilation
imputation match bias
JEL: 
J15
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
196.13 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.