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New Evidence on the Impact of Legal Status on Immigrant Labor Market Performance: The S panish Case
Author(s) -
AmuedoDorantes Catalina,
Malo Miguel A.,
MuñozBullón Fernando
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
labour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1467-9914
pISSN - 1121-7081
DOI - 10.1111/labr.12002
Subject(s) - immigration , earnings , demographic economics , economics , sample (material) , labour economics , political science , law , accounting , chemistry , chromatography
Using a recent and rich S panish data set on immigrants, we examine the impact of legal status on two measures of labor market performance: the likelihood of being employed and earnings. The S panish case is of special interest given the rapid increase in immigration over the past 15 years and the large number of amnesties granted during the 1990s and 2000s. We find that a 10 per cent increase in the share of legal immigrants would raise the overall employment likelihood of immigrants by 4 percentage points and their earnings by 3.3 per cent. The results, which prove robust to alternative sample specifications, confirm the well‐known importance of being legal for the economic assimilation of immigrants.