TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blau,Francine D.
AU  - Kahn,Lawrence M.
AU  - Moriarty,Joan Y.
AU  - Souza,Andre Portela
TI  - The Role of the Family in Immigrants' Labor-Market Activity: Evidence from the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9051
PY  - 2002
Y2  - July 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9051
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9051.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Francine D. Blau
ILR School
Cornell University
268 Ives Hall
Ithaca, New York 14853-3901
Tel: 607/255-4381
Fax: 607/255-4496
E-Mail: fdb4@cornell.edu
AB  - We use Census of Population microdata for 1980 and 1990 to examine the labor supply and wages of immigrant husbands and wives in the United States in a family context. Earlier research by Baker and Benjamin (1997) posits a family investment model in which, upon arrival, immigrant husbands invest in their human capital while immigrant wives work to provide the family with liquidity during this period. Consistent with this model, they find for Canada that immigrant wives work longer hours upon arrival than comparable natives, but, with time in Canada, they are eventually overtaken by native wives. In contrast, we find that, among immigrants to the United States, both husbands and wives work and earn less than comparable natives upon arrival, with similar shortfalls for men and women. Further, both immigrant husbands and wives have similar, positive assimilation profiles in wages and labor supply and eventually overtake both the wages and the labor supply of comparable natives.
ER  -