Abstract
Immigrant workers with darker skin color have lower pay than their counterparts with lighter skin color. Whether this pay penalty is due to labor market discrimination is explored using data from the New Immigrant Survey 2003 to estimate wage equations that control for skin color, sequentially taking into account a series of individual characteristics related to labor market productivity and personal background. These characteristics include Hispanic ethnicity, race, country of birth, education, family background, occupation in source country, English language proficiency, visa status, employer characteristics, and current occupation. The analysis finds that the labor market penalty to darker skin color cannot be attributed to differences in productivity and is evidence of labor market discrimination that arises within the U.S. labor market. The largest groups of post-1965 immigrants – those from Asia and Latin America – are penalized in the U.S. labor market for their darker skin color.
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Notes
- 1.
For more information, see Jasso, Massey, Rosenzweig, and Smith (forthcoming) and the survey overview available at http://nis.princeton.edu/overview.html. The data and documentation are available at http://nis.princeton.edu.
- 2.
Note that although I discuss employer discrimination for purposes of this example, other sources of discriminatory treatment include coworkers and customers.
- 3.
For recent summaries and evidence on assimilation, see Card (2005) and Borjas (2006). Card’s analysis shows that U.S. born children of immigrants have successfully assimilated, with education and wages higher than children of natives, while Borjas’s analysis shows considerably slower assimilation.
- 4.
Also of debate is whether the gap in skill levels between immigrants and native born is increasing (e.g., Borjas 1995) or decreasing (e.g., Jasso, Rosenzweig, and Smith 2000). Different conclusions can result from inclusion or exclusion of undocumented immigrants and differences in the definition of a recent immigrant.
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Hersch, J. (2008). Skin Color, Immigrant Wages, and Discrimination. In: Hall, R.E. (eds) Racism in the 21st Century. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79098-5_5
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