Which Child Immigrants Face Earnings Disparity? Age‐at‐immigration, Ethnic Minority Status and Labour Market Attainment in Canada
| Author | Ravi Pendakur,Krishna Pendakur |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12256 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
Which Child Immigrants Face Earnings
Disparity? Age-at-immigration, Ethnic
Minority Status and Labour Market
Attainment in Canada
Krishna Pendakur* and Ravi Pendakur**
ABSTRACT
Using Canadian Census microdata from 1990 to 2005, we investigate the earnings attainment of
immigrants to Canada in 6 age-at-arrival cohorts. In comparison to past work we extend our under-
standing regarding three dimensions of the age at immigration debate: we explore heterogeneity
across fine grained age-at-arrival cohorts, over a fifteen-year period and across different ethnic
groups. We find that white immigrants and female immigrants arriving in Canada prior to age 18
face little earnings disparity. In contrast, visible minority male immigrants face significant earnings
disparity regardless of their age-at-migration, and additionally this disparity increases sharply with
age-at-migration. We find a break in earnings attainment at an age-of-arrival of 17, with immi-
grants arriving after this age performing much worse than those arriving at this age or earlier. The
patterns observed are found for visible minority immigrants as a whole, and for Chinese, South
Asian and African/Black origin immigrants examined separately.
INTRODUCTION
Canada has among the world’s highest proportion of immigrants, with more than 21 per cent of
Canadian residents born abroad (Statistics Canada, 2013). Unfortunately, research suggests that
immigrants suffer very large earnings disparity on entry and that their earnings do not fully catch
up with those of native-born workers even over the long haul (see, e.g. Frenette and Morissette,
2005; McDonald and Worswick, 2010). Further, the gaps in labour market attainment faced by
immigrants to Canada have been growing over time (see, e.g. Pendakur and Pendakur, 2015).
Immigrants are heterogeneous, coming from different source countries with differing skills and
networks in Canada and, importantly, arriving at different ages. In 2006, of the 6.2 million immi-
grants in Canada, 1.6 million of them arrived in Canada at 14 years old or younger. Immigrants
who arrive young are often referred to as “generation 1.5”, and they acquire education and social
networks in Canada. Those who arrive youngest may also speak English or French without an
accent. A few papers have noted that generation 1.5 immigrants to Canada do not face nearly the
same economic disparity as immigrants who arrive older (Schaafsma and Sweetman, 2001; Boyd,
2002, Kim and Boyd 2009; Skuterud, 2010).
* Simon Fraser University
** University of Ottawa
doi: 10.1111/imig.12256
©2016 The Authors
International Migration ©2016 IOM
International Migration Vol. 54 (5) 2016
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
In this article we track the earnings disparity of immigrants to Canada in different age-at-arrival
cohorts over the period 1990 to 2005 (four census periods). Specifically we assess earnings out-
comes for six age-at-immigration cohorts compared with people born in Canada for both white and
visible minority workers. Our age-at-arrival cohorts are: aged 7 or less, 8 to 12 years old, 13 to
17 years old, 18 to 24 years old, 25 to 29 years old and 30 or more years old. These categories
identify broad breaks at elementary and secondary school for most of Canada, and to allow for pat-
terns of assimilation found in the linguistics literature wherein ages 7 and 12 are found to be criti-
cal ages (e.g. Johnson and Newport, 1989).
In contrast to existing literature on Canadian age at migration effects, we consider two new fac-
tors. First, how have these factors changed over time, and second, are these patterns different
between white and visible minority immigrants.
We find that, arriving younger (less than age 18) is correlated with lower earnings disparity com-
pared with those born in Canada. For white immigrants, and for female immigrants, we find that
child immigrants (those arriving at age 12 or less) have earnings identical to those of their counter-
parts born in Canada. Those arriving at older ages have slightly lower earnings. However, visible
minority male immigrants show a different pattern. For them, in 2005, earnings are lower than
Canadian-born visible minority men for all age-at-arrival cohorts, and these earnings gaps are much
larger for older age-at-arrival cohorts. The difference is especially stark for those arriving before
and after age 18. In addition we look at outcomes for the three largest visible minority groups
(African/Black, South Asian and Chinese) in 2006. These groups face a similar situation with the
exception of Chinese men, who face higher earnings differentials if they arrive after age 12.
LITERATURE
A large body of Canadian research since the late 1980s shows that immigrants, especially visible minor-
ity immigrants, face substantial earnings disparity, which may be worsening over time. Christofides and
Swindinsky (1994) studied hourly wage outcomes in the 1989 Labour Market Activity Survey, and
found that while British and French immigrants did not face wage disparity, other immigrants had
wages nearly 20 per cent less than their Canadian-born counterparts. Pendakur and Pendakur (1998)
used 1991 Census data and corroborate this result for annual earnings, finding earnings gaps of about
two per cent for immigrant white men, and 16 per cent for immigrant visible-minority men.
Immigrant earnings gaps persisted into the 1990s. Although immigrants could expect smaller
earnings gaps as their time in Canada lengthened, successive waves of immigrants did not do better
over time, even as immigrant communities in Canada grew substantially over the decades. Hum
and Simpson (1999) used data from the 1993 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics and found
entry earnings gaps for visible minority immigrant and white men to be 37 per cent and nine per
cent, respectively. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database to examine immigrant entry earn-
ings and catch-up rates between 1980 and 1996, Li (2003) found that immigrants who came in the
1990s did indeed have lower entry earnings than those who came in the 1980s. However, Hum
and Simpson (1999) estimated that the earnings of immigrant men had the potential to converge to
those of the native-born within ten years. Immigrants from non-European countries fared more
poorly. Li (2003) found that immigrants from Asia and Africa in particular took longer to catch up.
Hum and Simpson (2004) survey the literature and conclude that evidence from cross-sections and
panel data studies has contributed to a common acceptance of the notion that immigrant earnings
are unlikely to converge with those of native-born Canadians over the lifetime of the immigrant.
Entering the 2000s, Galarneau and Morissette (2004) used Census data from 1991, 1996 and
2001 to reaffirm that no narrowing of the earnings gap had occurred for the immigrant population
at large. Pendakur and Pendakur (2015) corroborate this result and extend it to 2006.
44 Pendakur and Pendakur
©2016 The Authors. International Migration ©2016 IOM
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