Wages of UK Immigrant Men Across Generations: Who Catches Up, Understanding Society Derivation Code, 2009-2019

Ochmann, Nico (2023). Wages of UK Immigrant Men Across Generations: Who Catches Up, Understanding Society Derivation Code, 2009-2019. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-856186

Current literature reports large first-generation immigrant-native wage differentials in the UK. The aim of this research is to show that some if by no means all of the wage differentials can be explained by human capital factors, i.e., by the source of qualification, work experience, and language.

Data description (abstract)

This paper that supplements the code available in this collection examines UK immigrant-native wage differentials for men across major first- and second-generation immigrant groups with the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) pooling cross-sections over the years 2009–2019. I find that first-generation immigrants with UK human capital experience less of a wage disadvantage than their immigrant counterparts with foreign language proficiency, qualifications, and work experience. Conditional on the heterogeneity in these productivity characteristics of first-generation immigrants, I observe no intergenerational economic progress across the two generations relative to UK natives. Using a conditional decomposition shows that UK work experience and not the source country of study for the qualification is a key factor in reducing first-generation, immigrant-native wage differentials in the UK.

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