Kevin Pineda Hernandez
(ULB)
will give a presentation on
Moving Up the Social Ladder? Intergenerational Earnings Mobility Among Female and Male Immigrants in Belgium
Abstract:
As second-generation immigrants from developing countries represent a sizeable share of the working-age population in developed countries, their labour market integration requires careful attention. Using a matched employer-employee database of 1.3 million observations for the Belgian private labour market between 1999 and 2016, our weighted multilevel linear regressions and reweighted, recentered influence function Oaxaca-Blinder (RIF-OB) decompositions indicate that second-generation female and male workers from developing countries earn more than their first-generation peers. Nonetheless, for each gender group, the overall wage gaps between workers born in developed countries, including Belgian natives, and workers from developing countries remain substantial across two generations to an increasing extent across the wage distribution. After accounting for a wide range of covariates (inter alia, demographics, human capital, occupations, sector and firm fixed effects), we find that, unlike the first generation, there is no clear-cut evidence of an adjusted wage gap for the second generation. Finally, reweighted RIF-OB decompositions suggest that whilst the overall wage gaps for the first generation are explained by unfavourable human capital, employment and sector characteristics, those for the second generation are mainly driven by their lower levels of age and tenure.