Abstract
We show that for all Asian groups from economically developing countries, the earnings gap between Asian and West European immigrants in family income is smaller than the gap in male income alone. The gap in family income is mitigated primarily because married women from economically developing countries are more likely to work and contribute a higher fraction of family income than do married women from Western Europe. As with West European immigrants, Japanese men have high initial earnings upon arrival and their wives have low rates of labor market participation.
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Notes
- 1.
Since no information is available on former spouses, the statistics concerning all families (not just married-couple families) are based on samples that include immigrants who were formerly married to U.S.-born individuals. If no spouse is present in the family, the foreign-born status of the family is that of the family’s head.
- 2.
In the census variable, losses exceeding $9990 are recorded only as “greater than $9990” and family incomes exceeding $75,000 are coded as “income of $75,000 or more.” To alleviate this shortcoming, we used the Pareto method to estimate the mean family income of families with earnings exceeding $75,000. Given their small number, we assume that families with losses of more than $9990, only lost $9990. The following income values were estimated for family incomes exceeding $75,000: Asian foreign born—$115,877; European and Canadian foreign born—$121,486. The Pareto method is described in Bureau of the Census, Technical Documentation, 1980 Census, Appendix J, p. 164. These estimated mean values were assigned to families of each of the groups who reported more than $75,000 of income.
- 3.
The Asian group definitions used in Chaps. 11, 12, and 15 are somewhat different than the definitions used in the rest of the book. The work in these three chapters builds on prior work by Duleep and Sanders that was focused on differences in economic status by race. The Asian groups are defined by the census race variable, which includes Filipino, Korean, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese as separate groups, and by whether the individual was foreign born (and not born abroad of U.S. parents). Country of origin is used elsewhere. We do not think this difference affects our results for married women but of course welcome further analysis.
- 4.
As a point of comparison, the family income in 1979 of U.S.-born non-Hispanic white families in which the head of the household is 18–64 years old was $26,514.
- 5.
The poverty rate is the percentage of families whose incomes fall below a threshold that considers family size, number of children, and age of the household head. The poverty threshold is based on the Department of Agriculture’s 1961 Economy Food Plan and the assumption that one-third of a family’s income goes to food. The poverty level is thus three times the current cost of the economy food plan. People below this income level are “poor”; those above it are “not poor.” The census variable used to measure the poverty level is the poverty status in 1979 and is defined as the ratio of family income in 1979 to a “poverty threshold.” (Bureau of the Census, Technical Documentation, Census of Population and Housing, 1980, Appendix K)
- 6.
As a point of reference, the poverty rate for U.S.-born non-Hispanic white families of the same age range in 1980 was 6.6%.
- 7.
Mirroring findings for the general population, Simon and Akbari (1996) found family composition to be the principal determinant of welfare use by immigrants, overshadowing other factors such as level of education.
- 8.
It also appears that marital dissolution is the cause of the unusually high poverty rates of Japanese immigrants who entered the United States before 1975.
- 9.
Intergroup differences in family dissolution also contribute to the relatively high poverty rates of some cohorts of Japanese immigrant families. Future analysts will also want to probe the role of refugees in the poverty rates of the Chinese and Europeans.
- 10.
The individual earnings that we combine are the sum of wage and salary income and farm and non-farm self-employment income, of each family member.
- 11.
The earnings of any individual, and therefore family income, can be less than zero. The possibility then exists that an individual can have a negative contribution to family income or a contribution greater than all family income or family losses. The measure here of the contribution of family members to family income is truncated so that if an individual earns more than the total family income, that contribution is set to one. Similarly, if the losses of an individual are greater than family income, the losses of the individual are set to negative one.
- 12.
Only families with both the husband and wife present are considered.
- 13.
In examining the role of children in family income, only children who are living at home and who are 18 years of age or younger are considered.
- 14.
This is true despite the fact that Asian immigrant families are more likely to have children living at home than European and Canadian immigrant families. However, the ratio of working children to all children at home is lower for Asian than for European and Canadian immigrant families. The lower propensity of Asian immigrant children to work than is the case for the European-Canadian group should be more rigorously pursued. The lower propensity of children to work in Asian immigrant families may reflect a greater emphasis on educational activities.
- 15.
The proportion of live-in relatives who work is highest among Filipino and Indian families, for whom more than a third of live-in relatives work. Among Chinese families, the labor force participation of live-in relatives is only slightly higher than for European and Canadian families, while it is lower among Korean and Japanese families (Table 11.7). Across all groups, about a quarter of live-in relatives work. Assuming equal income needs of working and nonworking relatives, this suggests that (in general) the contribution to family income arising from live-in relatives is dominated by the increased burden on family income that their presence engenders.
- 16.
Working women are defined as persons who reported positive earnings, positive weeks worked, and positive hours worked in 1979. In other words, women who worked at some point during the year 1979.
- 17.
- 18.
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Duleep, H., Regets, M.C., Sanders, S., Wunnava, P.V. (2020). Family Income. In: Human Capital Investment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47083-8_11
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