Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP7888
Authors: Marco Manacorda; Alan Manning; Jonathan Wadsworth
Abstract: Immigration to the UK, particularly among more educated workers, has risen appreciably over the past 30 years and as such has raised labor supply. However studies of the impact of immigration have failed to find any significant effect on the wages of native-born workers in the UK. This is potentially puzzling since there is evidence that changes in the supply of educated natives have significant effects on their wages. Using a pooled time series of British crosssectional micro data on male wages and employment from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, this paper offers a resolution to this puzzle, namely that in the UK natives and foreign born workers are imperfect substitutes. We show that immigration has primarily reduced the wages of immigrants - and in particular of university educated immigrants - with little discernable effect on the wages of the native-born.
Keywords: immigration; returns to education; wages
JEL Codes: J6
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Immigration (F22) | Wages of Immigrants (J31) |
| Increase in Supply of Immigrants (J69) | Wages of Existing Immigrants (J69) |
| Increase in Share of University Graduates Among Immigrants (J69) | Wage Returns of Immigrants (J69) |
| Immigration (F22) | Wages of Native-Born Workers (J39) |