Premium
Immigrant Earnings Adjustment: The Impact of Age at Migration
Author(s) -
Wilkins Roger
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
australian economic papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-8454
pISSN - 0004-900X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8454.00200
Subject(s) - earnings , immigration , demographic economics , economics , geography , accounting , archaeology
Human capital theory, in conjunction with Chiswick's (1978) and Borjas’ (1998) work, implies the post‐migration path of immigrant earnings is likely to depend on the age at migration. An adaptation of Borjas’ (1998) model of immigrant wage determination is presented which predicts, for a given stock of human capital at the point of migration, lower initial earnings for younger arrivals, but faster earnings growth with time in the destination country. Empirical tests on data for Australian immigrants provide qualified support for the hypothesis that initial wages are, ceteris paribus , increasing in age at migration and the rate of wage growth is decreasing in age at migration.