TY - JOUR
T1 - Job Mobility as a New Explanation for the Immigrant-Native Wage Gap
T2 - A Longitudinal Analysis of the German Labor Market 1
AU - Brenzel, Hanna
AU - Reichelt, Malte
N1 - Funding Information:
1We would like to thank Herbert Bru€cker, Enzo Weber, Martin Abraham, and Uwe Blien as well as the participants of the Summer School DEFAP-LASER in Applied Microecono-metrics, the participants of the Young Economists Meeting in Brno, the editor, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Graduate Programme of the IAB and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (GradAB).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York.
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - In industrialized countries, wages between migrants and natives usually differ. Previous studies that mostly focused on human capital theory and cross-sectional wage differences failed to fully explain the wage gap. We offer a new explanation and assume that differences in the employment trajectories of migrants and natives contribute to diverging wages after labor market entrance. Utilizing longitudinal data for Germany, we analyze the job mobility of migrants and natives and distinguish among voluntary, involuntary, and internal job changes. Indeed, we find evidence for differences in transition patterns and — using several fixed-effects regressions — are able to explain a substantial part of the gap in hourly wages. The results suggest that the higher number of involuntary changes among migrants increases the wage gap. In contrast, support for more voluntary and internal job changes among migrants should help to counteract diverging earnings trajectories.
AB - In industrialized countries, wages between migrants and natives usually differ. Previous studies that mostly focused on human capital theory and cross-sectional wage differences failed to fully explain the wage gap. We offer a new explanation and assume that differences in the employment trajectories of migrants and natives contribute to diverging wages after labor market entrance. Utilizing longitudinal data for Germany, we analyze the job mobility of migrants and natives and distinguish among voluntary, involuntary, and internal job changes. Indeed, we find evidence for differences in transition patterns and — using several fixed-effects regressions — are able to explain a substantial part of the gap in hourly wages. The results suggest that the higher number of involuntary changes among migrants increases the wage gap. In contrast, support for more voluntary and internal job changes among migrants should help to counteract diverging earnings trajectories.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85060081218&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85060081218&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0197918318781834
DO - 10.1177/0197918318781834
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85060081218
VL - 52
SP - 724
EP - 749
JO - International Migration Review
JF - International Migration Review
SN - 0197-9183
IS - 3
ER -