NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Assimilation and Changes in Cohort Quality Revisited: What Happened to Immigrant Earnings in the 1980s?

George J. Borjas

NBER Working Paper No. 4866*
Issued in September 1994
NBER Program(s):   LS

This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Public Use Samples of the U.S. Census to document what happened to immigrant earnings in the 1980s, and to determine if pre-1980 immigrant flows reached earnings parity with natives. The relative entry wage of successive immigrant cohorts declined by 9 percent in the 1970s, and by an additional 6 percent in the 1980s. Although the relative wage of immigrants grows by 10 percent during the first two decades after arrival, the relative wage of post-1970 immigrants will remain 15 to 20 percent below those of natives throughout much of their working lives.

*Published: JLE, Vol. 13, no. 2 (1995): 201-245.

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