Study on the Assimilation of Immigrants

A study entitled “Profiling the New Immigrant Worker: The Effects of Skin Color and Height” by JONI HERSCH (Vanderbilt University Law School, Owen Graduate School of Management, Department of Economics) sheds interesting, perhaps expected, light on the ease of immigrant assimilation.

ABSTRACT: Whether and how quickly immigrants assimilate into the U.S. labor market is an issue of great policy importance and controversy. Using newly-available data from the New Immigrant Survey 2003, this paper shows that new lawful immigrants to the U.S. who have lighter skin color and are taller have higher earnings, controlling for extensive labor market and immigration status information, as well as for education, English language proficiency, outdoor work, occupation, ethnicity, race, and country of birth. Immigrants with the lightest skin color earn on average 8 to 15 percent more than comparable immigrants with the darkest skin tone. Each extra inch of height is associated with a 1 percent increase in wages. The skin color advantage is not due to preferential treatment of those with lighter skin color in country of birth or to interviewer bias. The findings of this paper are consistent with discrimination against new immigrants on the basis of skin color.  Full Text: http://ssrn.com/abstract=927038

KJ