Immigration, Assimilation and Inequality of Income Distribution in Canada (original) (raw)
Related papers
Social Sciences, 2013
This study assesses whether characteristics relating to ethnic identity and social inclusion influence the earnings of recent immigrants in Canada. Past research has revealed that relevant predictors of immigrant earnings include structural and demographic characteristics, educational credentials and employment-related characteristics. However, due to the unavailability of situational and agency variables in existing surveys, past research has generally been unable to account for the impact of such characteristics on the economic integration of immigrants. Drawing on data from Statistics Canada's Ethnic Diversity Survey, this paper builds on previous research by identifying the relative extent to which sociodemographic, educational and ethnic identity characteristics explain earnings differences between immigrants of two recent cohorts and native-born Canadians.
An Analysis of the Earnings of Canadian Immigrants
1989
This paper reports estimates of simple wage equations fit to cross-sectional and pseudo-longitudinal data for Canadian immigrants in the 1971 and 1981 Canadian censuses. The estimates are used to assess (1) the usefulness of crosssectional analyses for measuring the pace of immigrant earnings growth, (2) the labor market implications of admissions policies that place different weights on the work skills possessed by prospective entrants, and (3) the relative impact of selective outmigration and job-matching on the shape of immigrant earnings distributions as duration of stay increases. The estimates provide evidence of a small to moderate assimilation effect that suggests that immigrants make up for relatively low entry wages, although the wage catch-up is not complete until 13 to 22 years after entry into Canada. These results are revealed clearly in both the pseudo-longitudinal and the cross-sectional analyses. The estimates also provide evidence that the unobserved quality of immigrants' labor market skills declined following changes in Canada's immigration policies in 1974 that led to a sharp increase in the proportion of immigrants admitted on the basis of family ties. Finally, since there is no evidence that the variance of immigrant earnings increases with their duration of stay in Canada, and since there are no differential immigrant-native changes in higher-order moments of the earnings distribution as duration of stay increases, the results are inconclusive with respect to the importance of selective outmigration and job matching in the evolution of immigrant earnings distributions over time.
8. The Colour Of Money Redux: Immigrant/Ethnic Earnings Disparity In Canada, 1991–2006
The Housing and Economic Experiences of Immigrants in U.S. and Canadian Cities, 2015
In this paper, we investigate how visible minority and immigrant earnings gaps in Canada evolved over 1991 to 2006. Immigrant disparity changes with the duration of residence in Canada, so we evaluate disparity at 5 years in Canada, that is for relatively recent immigrants. We find that, overall, visible minority-and immigrant-based earnings disparity increased substantially over the 15 year period. This pattern is observed broadly for both men and women, in Canada as a whole and in each of its three largest CMAs, for most white and visible minority immigrant groups, and for most Canadian-born visible minority ethnic groups. The decline in relative earnings is large: it is on the order of 20 percentage points for both white and visible minority immigrants and on the order of 10 percentage points for Canadian-born visible minority workers.
Explaining the deteriorating entry earnings of Canada's immigrant cohorts, 1966 – 2000
Canadian Journal of Economics-revue Canadienne D Economique, 2005
The study explores causes of the deterioration in entry earnings of Canadian immigrant cohorts by estimating an empirical specification that nests a number of competing explanations found in the Canadian literature. To do this, we use the pooled sample of Canadian-born and immigrant men employed full-year, full-time from the complete 20 percent samples of the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996 Our results indicate that no more than one-third of the deterioration can be explained by compositional shifts in the knowledge of an official language, mother tongue and region of origin of recent immigrant cohorts. We also find little or no evidence that declining returns to foreign education are responsible. Roughly one-third of the deterioration appears to be due to a persistent decline in the returns to foreign labour market experience which has occurred almost exclusively among immigrants originating from non-traditional source countries. We are able to explain two-thirds of the overall decline in the entry earnings of Canada's most recent immigrants without any reference to entry labour market conditions. When we also account for entry conditions, our results suggest that Canada's immigrants who arrived in the 1995-1999 period would otherwise be enjoying entry earnings that were significantly higher than the entry earnings of the 1965-1969 cohort.
A distributional analysis of the wage gap between Immigrants and Canadian-born workers
2019
The findings of this paper reveal a distributional analysis of the wage gap between immigrant and Canadian-born workers, considering socioeconomic characteristics. Wage discrimination has been a topic of interest for decades. In labour economics, marginal productivity determines the wage as a function of labour human capital. This study analyses the wage differences between immigrant and Canadian-born workers in labour market outcomes in order to find the measure of hidden discrimination against immigrants. Using the combined data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) of the six months' gap (April 2018-October 2018), this paper analyses the wage gap among immigrant and Canadian-born workers in the 25-64-year old age group. After applying a standard Oaxaca-Blinder technique and the counterfactual decomposition with distribution regression, the main result reveals the impact on the wage differentials encompassing educational attainment, age, geographical location, marital status and province of residence. A conditional distribution regression with counterfactual distribution is used to measure the percentile impact of immigrants and Canadian-born workers' wage impact on wage distribution. The results demonstrate that an immigrant earns less than a Canadian-born worker among all age groups and all-educational levels within the 25-64 age group. The wage gap is larger for Canadian-born workers in provinces, cities and industries and occupational groups. Finally, the result compares an Oaxaca decomposition with counterfactual distribution with distribution regression. The findings highlight that earning differentials favour the Canadian-born workers leave immigrants at a disadvantaged. In Oaxaca, education is a positive that is encouraged for immigrants, whereas for Canadian-born workers it is a negative. Conversely, differentials increase until reaching the higher income distribution before declining. Hence, a low level of discrimination occurs in the higher-income groups. This result suggests that if the differential is reduced then labour market productivity could be increased as well as overall worker motivation.
The Changing Labour Market Position of Canadian Immigrants
The Canadian Journal of Economics, 1995
Canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which the earnings of Canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable Canadian-born individuals, and (2) immigrants' earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the Canadianborn. Variations in the labor market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analyzed. The results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the Canadian labor market than earlier ones, an apparent consequence of recent changes in Canadian immigration policy, labor market discrimination against visible minorities, and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s.
2011
This is the first of two papers reporting on work in progress which is devoted to economic inequalities arising from an immigrant background in Quebec. Specifically, it presents the facts with reference to the metropolitan area (CMA) of Montreal as they come out of the 2006 Census of Population, whereas the companion paper deals with the explanations behind those facts : Victor Chung, Alain Bélanger and Jacques Ledent, Economic inequalities arising from an immigrant background in Quebec: 2. Explanations. Prepared for discussion at the International Seminar Rethinking Equity in India and Quebec: Towards Inclusive Societies to be held in Montreal, November 7-9, 2011. 2 Statistics Canada, Ethnic Origin (101), Age Groups (8), Sex (3) and Selected Demographic, Cultural, Labour Force, Educational and Income Characteristics (309), for the Total Population-Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations-Cat. No. 97-564-X2006007. 3 Indeed, according to the 2006 census, the Montreal CMA which is home to 48% of the population aged 15 years and over living in Quebec comprises 88% of immigrants, 91% of visible minorities and 81% of non-French speakers among them.
Will they ever converge? Earnings of immigrant and Canadian-born
2000
Using Census data covering the 1980-2000 period, we examine what outcomes would be necessary for today's recent immigrant cohorts to achieve earnings parity with Canadian-born workers. Our results show that today's recent immigrants would have to experience a drastic steepening of their relative age-earnings profile in the near future for their earnings to converge with their Canadianborn counterparts. The reason is simple: the greater relative earnings growth experienced by recent immigrant cohorts has only partially offset the drastic deterioration in their relative earnings at entry.