Overview

Abstract (English)

Using the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) I examine how male and female immigrants’ foreign human capital is rewarded in the Canadian labour market. I exploit the enhanced details on education attainment, provided in the SLID, to decompose human capital variables into foreign and Canadian measures that are more precise than those used in related Census-based studies. I find that measurement error associated with using imprecise measures exaggerates the portability of foreign schooling and the degree of immigrant wage assimilation. However, the virtually zero returns to foreign work experience, commonly found in the literature, cannot be attributed to measurement error. Thus, this dimension of human capital receives virtually no recognition and is mainly responsible for estimated wage gaps in the standard human-capital-adjusted earnings function.

Abstract (French)

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