IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3123.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Natives

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph G. Altonji
  • David Card

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of immigration on the labor market outcomes of less-skilled natives. Working from a simple model of a local labor market, we show that the effects of immigration can be estimated from the correlations between the fraction of immigrants in a city and the employment and wage outcomes of natives. The size of the effects depend on the fraction and skill composition of the immigrants. We go on to compute these correlations using city-specific outcomes for individuals in 120 major SMSA's in the 1970 and 1980 Censuses. We also use the relative industry distributions of immigrants and natives to provide a direct assessment of the degree of labor market competition between them. Our empirical findings indicate a modest degree of competition between immigrants and less-skilled natives. A comparison of industry distributions shows that an increase in the fraction of immigrants in the labor force translates to an approximately equivalent percentage increase in the supply of labor to industries in which less-skilled natives are employed. Based on this calculation, immigrant influws between 1970 and 1980 generated 1-2 percent increases in labor supply to these industries in most cities. A comparison of industry distributions of less-skilled natives in high- and low-immigrant share cities between 1970 and 1980 shows some displacement out of low-wage immigrant-intensive industries. We find little effect of immigration on the employment outcomes of the four race/sex groups that we consider. Our estimates of the effect of immigration on the wages of less-skilled natives are sensitive to the specification and estimation procedure. However, our preferred estimates, which are based on first differences between 1980 and 1970 and the use of instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of immigrant inflows, imply that an increase in immigrants equal to 1 percent of an SMSA's population reduces native wages by roughly 1.2 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph G. Altonji & David Card, 1989. "The Effects of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Natives," NBER Working Papers 3123, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3123
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3123.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George J. Borjas, 2021. "Assimilation, Changes in Cohort Quality, and the Earnings of Immigrants," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 2, pages 3-29, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Peter Kuhn & Ian Wooton, 1991. "Immigration, International Trade, and the Wages of Native Workers," NBER Chapters, in: Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, pages 285-304, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Robert J. LaLonde & Robert H. Topel, 1991. "Labor Market Adjustments to Increased Immigration," NBER Chapters, in: Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, pages 167-199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Grossman, Jean Baldwin, 1982. "The Substitutability of Natives and Immigrants in Production," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(4), pages 596-603, November.
    5. George E. Johnson, 1980. "The Labor Market Effects of Immigration," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 33(3), pages 331-341, April.
    6. Greenwood, Michael J & McDowell, John M, 1986. "The Factor Market Consequences of U.S. Immigration," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1738-1772, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Card, 2005. "Is the New Immigration Really so Bad?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(507), pages 300-323, November.
    2. George J. Borjas & Stephen J. Trejo, 1991. "Immigrant Participation in the Welfare System," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 44(2), pages 195-211, January.
    3. Greenwood, Michael J. & Hunt, Gary L. & Kohli, Ulrich, 1997. "The factor-market consequences of unskilled immigration to the United States," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-28, March.
    4. Chletsos Michael & Roupakias Stelios, 2019. "Do Immigrants Compete with Natives in the Greek Labour Market? Evidence from the Skill-Cell Approach before and during the Great Recession," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-30, April.
    5. Richard B. Freeman & Lawrence F. Katz, 1995. "Introduction and Summary," NBER Chapters, in: Differences and Changes in Wage Structures, pages 1-22, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Hammer, Luisa & Hertweck, Matthias S., 2022. "EU enlargement and (temporary) migration: Effects on labour market outcomes in Germany," Discussion Papers 02/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Lin, Chun-Hung Andy, 2000. "Changing wages and employment by skill in Taiwan, 1978-1996: The roles of education policy, trade, and immigration," ISU General Staff Papers 2000010108000013699, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    8. Karin Mayr, 2003. "Immigration and Majority Voting on Income Redistriubtion-Is there a Case for Opposition from Natives?," Economics working papers 2003-08, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    9. David Card, 2009. "Immigration and Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 1-21, May.
    10. Marie Howland & Doan Nguyen, 2010. "The Impact of Immigration on Four Low-Wage Industries in the 1990s," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 24(2), pages 99-109, May.
    11. Abdurrahman Aydemir & George J. Borjas, 2011. "Attenuation Bias in Measuring the Wage Impact of Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 69-113, January.
    12. Steinhardt Max Friedrich, 2011. "The Wage Impact of Immigration in Germany - New Evidence for Skill Groups and Occupations," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-35, June.
    13. Lemos, Sara & Portes, Jonathan, 2008. "New Labour? The Impact of Migration from Central and Eastern European Countries on the UK Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 3756, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Martin Kahanec & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2008. "Migration, the Quality of the Labour Force and Economic Inequality," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 781, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    15. George J. Borjas, 1995. "The internationalization of the U.S. labor market and the wage structure," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jan, pages 3-8.
    16. Joan Llull, 2018. "The Effect of Immigration on Wages: Exploiting Exogenous Variation at the National Level," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 53(3), pages 608-662.
    17. Eleftherios Giovanis, 2022. "The effects of international migration on well-being of natives and immigrants: evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(6), pages 1-33, June.
    18. George J. Borjas & Lawrence F. Katz, 2007. "The Evolution of the Mexican-Born Workforce in the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Mexican Immigration to the United States, pages 13-56, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Licht, Georg & Steiner, Viktor, 1993. "Assimilation, labour market experience, and earnings profiles of temporary and permanent immigrant workers in germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 93-06, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Boubtane, Ekrame & Coulibaly, Dramane & Rault, Christophe, 2013. "Immigration, unemployment and GDP in the host country: Bootstrap panel Granger causality analysis on OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 261-269.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3123. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.