10.17889/E110706V1
Peri, Giovanni
Sparber, Chad
Replication data for: Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages
ICPSR Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
2008
10.1257/app.1.3.135
10.1257/app.1.3.135
1
Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid
to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated
foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different production
tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause
natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward
wage pressure. Using occupational task-intensity data from the
O*NET dataset and individual US census data, we demonstrate that
foreign-born workers specialize in occupations intensive in manual-physical
labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in
communication-language tasks. This mechanism can explain why
economic analyses find only modest wage consequences of immigration
for less educated native-born workers. (JEL J24, J31, J61)