Work

Immigration and economic mobility

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: We examine how immigration affects natives’ relative prime-age labor market outcomes by economic class background, with class background established on the basis of parents’ earnings rank. Exploiting alternative sources of variation in immigration patterns across time and space, we find that immigration from low-income countries reduces intergenerational mobility and thus steepens the social gradient in natives’ labor market outcomes, whereas immigration from high-income countries levels it. These findings are robust with respect to a wide range of identifying assumptions. The analysis is based on high-quality population-wide administrative data from Norway, which is one of the rich-world countries with the most rapid rise in the immigrant population share over the past two decades. Our findings suggest that immigration can explain a considerable part of the observed relative decline in economic performance among natives with a lower-class background.

Source: Journal of Population Economics

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-021-00851-4

Authors: Maria F. Hoen, Simen Markussen, Knut Røed

Institution: Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research

Language: English

Topic: Migration and Labor Dynamics

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,780