Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:17:13.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE EFFECTS OF LABOR MARKET COMPETITION WITH IMMIGRANTS ON THE WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT OF NATIVES

What Does Existing Research Tell Us?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2008

Steven Raphael  and
Lucas Ronconi
Steven Raphael*
Affiliation:
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
Lucas Ronconi
Affiliation:
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
*
Professor Steven Raphael, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, 2607 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720-7320. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the current debate among economists pertaining to the effects of recent immigration on the earnings and employment of native-born workers. Since much of this debate revolves around methodological differences in research design, we devote much of our effort to discussing the various strategies that researchers have used to isolate immigrant competition effects, and attempt to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy. Our overall assessment is that the central tendency of the research evidence suggests that recent immigration has had only a modest effect on the labor market prospects of native-born Americans. Some potential hypotheses that may explain this lack of a large impact are capital accumulation and the imperfect substitutability between natives and immigrants.

Keywords

ImmigrationEmploymentWagesSkillsIncarceration
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2007 , pp. 413 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Altonji, Joseph G. and Card, David (1991). The Effects of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Less-Skilled Natives. In Abowd, John M. and Freeman, Richard B. (Eds.), Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, pp. 201–231. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Borjas, George J. (1995). Assimilation and Changes in Cohort Quality Revisited: What Happened to Immigrant Earnings During the 1980s? Journal of Labor Economics, 13(2): 201–245.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Borjas, George J. (1999). Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Borjas, George J. (2003). The Labor Demand Curve is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4): 1335–1374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borjas, George J. (2005). Wage Trends among Disadvantaged Minorities. National Poverty Center Working Paper #05-12.Google Scholar
Borjas, George J., Freeman, Richard B., and Katz, Lawrence F. (1997). How Much Do Immigration and Trade Affect Labor Market Outcomes? Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1: 1–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David (1990). The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 43: 245–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David (2001). Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration. Journal of Labor Economics, 19(1): 22–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David (2005). Is the New Immigration Really so Bad? National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper #11547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David and DiNardo, John E. (2000). Do Immigrant Inflows Lead to Native Outflows? American Economic Review, 90: 360–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrington, William J. and de Lima, Pedro J. F. (1996). The Impact of 1970s Repatriates from Africa on the Portuguese Labor Market. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 49(2): 330–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedberg, Rachel M. (2001). The Impact of Mass Migration on the Israeli Labor Market. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4): 1373–1408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedberg, Rachel M. and Hunt, Jennifer (1995). The Impact of Immigration on Host Country Wages, Employment, and Growth. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2): 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Jean B. (1982). The Substitutability of Natives and Immigrants in Production. Review of Economics and Statistics, 64(4): 596–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Jennifer (1992). The Impact of the 1962 Repatriates from Algeria on the French Labor Market. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 45(3): 556–572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Ethan G. (2003). Local Open Economies within the U.S.: How Do Industries Respond to Immigration? Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ottaviano, Gianmarco I. P. and Peri, Giovanni (2005). Rethinking the Gains from Immigration: Theory and Evidence from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper #11672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pischke, Jörn-Steffen and Velling, Johannes (1997). Employment Effects of Immigration to Germany: An Analysis Based on Local Labor Markets. Review of Economics and Statistics, 79(4): 594–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raphael, Steven (2005). The Socioeconomic Status of Black Males: The Increasing Importance of Incarceration. In Auerbach, Alan, Card, David, and Quigley, John (Eds.), Poverty, the Distribution of Income, and Public Policy, pp. 319–358. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Raphael, Steven and Ronconi, Lucas (2005). Reconciling National and Regional Estimates of the Effect of Immigration on U.S. Labor Markets: The Confounding Effect of Native Male Incarceration Trends. Unpublished manuscript. ⟨http://iir.berkeley.edu/cwed/ronconi/immigration_institutionalization.pdf⟩ (accessed January 31, 2008).Google Scholar
Smith, James P. and Edmonston, Barry (1997). The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (2001). Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000, P23-206. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar