Abstract
Compared to Hispanic and Asian immigrants, black immigrants in the United States have been considerably less researched, and until very recently, black African immigrants remained a relatively understudied group. Using data from three waves of the US Census (1980, 1990, and 2000), we assess differences in earnings (and related measures of socioeconomic status) among male and female African Americans and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Results of the analysis suggest a sizeable earnings advantage for immigrants. Controlling for a host of human capital variables, however, reduced the gap between the earnings of African immigrants and native-born blacks, although the difference still remained statistically significant. No such attenuation was found for immigrants from the Caribbean. The results also indicate that for females only, the immigrant advantage has grown over time. Moreover, the findings show that additional years of work experience in the USA or in foreign countries correspond to a rather sizable increase in hourly earnings for both males and females, but, for males, this effect has grown weaker over time. Finally, men earned more than women, both overall and within comparison groups with the gap remaining relatively stable over time.
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Notes
According to a Migration Policy Institute report (McCabe 2011), the top countries of origin for the African-born in 2000 were, in alphabetical order, Egypt (138,194, or 9.3 % of all African immigrants), Ethiopia (148,221, or 9.9 %), Ghana (108,647, or 7.3 %), Kenya (87,267, or 5.8 %), and Nigeria (209,908, or 14.1 %). Other countries of birth for African immigrants with high numbers of immigrants in the United States included, alphabetically: Cameroon (30,726, or 2.1 %), Cape Verde (32,885, or 2.2 %), Eritrea (23,840, or 1.6 %), Liberia (72,111, or 4.8 %), Morocco (58,283, or 3.9 %), Sierra Leone (32,467, or 2.2 %), South Africa (82,339, or 5.5 %), and Sudan (35,821, or 2.4 %).
For the purpose of convenience, the term “native-born blacks” is used interchangeably with African Americans throughout this paper.
This argument also implies that if men’s migration is more frequently motivated by economic incentives than women’s, immigrant men will be more positively selected. Chiswick (1978), for example, uses this line of reasoning to explain the slightly greater earnings advantage of sons whose only foreign-born parent was a father as compared to those whose only foreign-born parent was a mother.
Notably, one study (Kalmijn 1996) also found generational differences in attainment between immigrant, second and later-generation Caribbean blacks; with the later generations generally indicating higher socioeconomic status. Implicitly, this means, at least for second and later-generation British Caribbeans, further gains on African Americans as compared to those gains for the immigrant’s generation.
One study (Butcher 1994) uncovered an unexpected but interesting and important finding that is worth noting: remarkable similarity between native-born black “movers” (men who had moved out of their state of birth to another) and black Jamaican and other Caribbean immigrant men “on a variety of employment and wage measures” (p. 265, also see Model 2008). This finding suggests positive selectivity for both immigrants and native-born “movers,” suggesting migration to be the key variable, and not nativity.
Nevertheless, an important and lasting contribution of Sowell’s (1978) essay is that it emphasized another dimension to the study of race and ethnicity in the United States that, until then, remained relatively under-studied: black immigrants as a natural comparison group to native-born blacks.
As of the date of the preparation of this manuscript, IPUMS data for 2010 Census was not available. Analysis of ACS (American Community Survey) data for 2001–2010 (not reported here, but available upon request), however, revealed patterns that were very similar to those reported below.
For a complete description of the IPUMS dataset (including sample and variable descriptions, data compilation and storage), see the IPUMS website at http://www.ipums.org.
We avoid the frequently followed practice of randomly selecting 10 % of the African American sample for analysis (Dodoo 1997; Dodoo and Takyi 2002; Model 1991; Corra and Kimuna 2009), because, by sampling only 10 % of the native-born African Americans, but using all cases from Africa and from the Caribbean, most regression coefficients are almost certainly misleading because the weight of native African Americans on these coefficients is reduced. Also, the reliability (the precision) of the findings is almost certainly reduced by cutting back on the sample size. Only the interaction between holding a college degree and place of origin overcomes the first problem (regression coefficients), but the problem of losing precision remains. Hence, we run regression models on the full African American sample.
English proficiency or the ability to understand and speak English well varies across immigrant groups. It should be noted that this variable is self-reported in the census documents, thus, it is a subjective measure of the ability to understand and speak the English language well.
Ideally, one would want to control for labor market conditions that might affect earnings. However, our data were not conducive to this type of analysis. As a rather weak proxy, we computed three-way interaction terms for group of origin, region, and urban residence and entered them into the models. The results were not significant across any of the groups and their inclusion did not change the substantive conclusions presented below. We also used state of residence instead of region as the location control and the results were the same.
We ran additional models and found that men earned more than women, both overall and within comparison groups.
Use of a logged dependent variable allows interpretation of coefficients as percentage changes in the dependent variable, once the appropriate calculation has been made: percent change in the dependent variable for a unit change in the independent variable = (e B − 1)*100.
Corra and Kimuna’s recent analysis (2009) similarly finds subtle but important earnings differences among female African Americans, African, and Caribbean immigrants. After distinguishing Caribbean immigrants into three categories of linguistic heritage—English, French, and Spanish—Corra and Kimuna (2009) report noticeably higher average earnings for African, English, and French Caribbean immigrant women than that for their African American counterparts.
One interpretation of this finding is that the earnings advantage of African immigrants, relative to native-born blacks, to a sizeable degree, is accounted for by favorable earnings-related endowments possessed by African immigrants (Dodoo 1997). By contrast, the fact that no such attenuation is found for Caribbean immigrants (both males and females) suggests that the advantage in earnings-related attributes like education and occupation that Caribbean immigrants exhibit over African Americans (see Table 2 above) does not fully account for the earnings difference between these two groups. As noted above, there is some evidence that black African immigrants face substantial discrimination in the US labor market (Scroggins 1989; Takougang 1995; Apraku 1996; Kposowa 2002). It may very well be the case that this is especially true for African immigrant males.
Interaction/trend estimates that are not significant are not reported in Table 4. For males, this includes estimates for African, Caribbean, Immigrated under 16, married, citizenship, the English language dummies (none, poor, and good) and foreign degree; for females, it includes South, citizenship, the English language dummies, US experience and its squared term, and foreign experience and its squared term.
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Corra, M.K., Borch, C. Socioeconomic Differences among Blacks in America: Over Time Trends. Race Soc Probl 6, 103–119 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-014-9114-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-014-9114-5