Research Paper No. 542

MACROECONOMICS CONDITIONS AND THE EARNINGS ASSIMILATION OF IMMIGRANTS

by

James Ted McDonald & Christopher Worswick

November 1996

Department of Economics. University of Melbourne. Parkville Victoria 3052 Australia

ABSTRACT

The earnings of immigrant and native-born men in Canada are compared using eleven cross-sectional surveys spanning the years from 1981 to 1992. Evidence of a decline of the earnings of recent cohorts of immigrants to Canada is not found. Job tenure information is introduced for the first time into an analysis of immigrant earnings and is found to be a strongly significant determinant of earnings; thus, previous estimates of immigrant earnings differentials may reflect in part differences in tenure between immigrants and the native born. When the sample is restricted to pairs of surveys which are close to the Census survey years. Macroeconomic conditions are found to be a significant determinant of the rate of assimilation of recent immigrants, thus providing an explanation for the sensitivity of earnings assimilation estimates based on two survey years to the choice of those years.
 
 

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