The impact of immigration on the structure of male wages: theory and evidence from Britain

Manacorda, Marco, Manning, Alan and Wadsworth, Jonathan (2006) The impact of immigration on the structure of male wages: theory and evidence from Britain. CEPDP, 754. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. ISBN 0753020602

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Abstract

Immigration to the UK has risen in the past 10 years and has had a measurable effect on the supply of different types of labour. But, existing studies of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers in the UK (e.g. Dustmann, Fabbri and Preston, 2005) 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.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://cep.lse.ac.uk
Additional Information:	© 2006 the authors
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Journal of Economic Literature Classification System:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies
Sets:	Collections > Economists Online Research centres and groups > Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) Departments > Economics
Identification Number:	754
Date Deposited:	21 Jul 2008 16:38
URL:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19797/

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