The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Male Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain

Arbeitspapier

Immigration to the UK has risen over time. Existing studies of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers in the UK have failed to find any significant effect. This is something of a puzzle since Card and Lemieux, (2001) have shown that changes in the relative supply of educated natives do seem to have measurable effects on the wage structure. This paper offers a resolution of this puzzle - natives and immigrants are imperfect substitutes, so that an increase in immigration reduces the wages of immigrants relative to natives. We show this using a pooled time series of British cross-sectional micro data of observations on male wages and employment from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. This lack of substitution also means that there is little discernable effect of increased immigration on the wages of native-born workers, but that the only sizeable effect of increased immigration is on the wages of those immigrants who are already here.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CReAM Discussion Paper Series ; No. 08/06

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Wages ; Wage Inequality ; Immigration

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Manacorda, Marco ; Manning, Alan ; Wadsworth, Jonathan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London
• (where): London
• (when): 2006

Further information

• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET