Ethnic minority immigrants and their children in Britain

Abstract

This paper investigates educational attainment and economic behaviour of ethnic minority immigrants and their children in Britain. Despite their strong educational achievements, ethnic minority immigrants and their descendants exhibit lower employment probabilities than their white native born peers. Although unconditional wages of British born ethnic minorities appear to be slightly higher than those of their white native born peers, their wages would be considerably lower if they had the same characteristics and regional allocation. Differences in wage offer distributions hardly account for the employment differences of British born ethnic minorities. Further, British born ethnic minorities have lower employment propensities for the same wages than native born whites. We examine possible explanations for these gaps.Ethnic Minorities/Immigrants, Education, Employment, Wages