The Deteriorating Economic Welfare of Immigrants and Possible Causes: Update 2005

Also reviewed here are the explanations discussed in the literature for the deterioration of immigrant economic outcomes. Three major sources are identified as being empirically important, all of which follow from declining labour market outcomes. First, the change in the characteristics of immigrants (e.g., from different source regions, rising levels of educational attainment, etc.) appears to have accounted for about one-third of the increase in the earnings gap at entry (i.e., the gap between immigrants and comparable Canadian-born). Second, decreasing economic returns to foreign work experience appears to play an equally large role. Third, there has been a general decline in the labour market outcomes of all new entrants to the Canadian labour market, and when new immigrants arrive in Canada they, regardless of age, appear to face a similar phenomenon. Other possible explanations are also discussed. Importantly, one potential factor that does not appear to be behind the decline is a reduction in the economic return to education. Immigrants, on average, do have a somewhat lower return to education obtained prior to immigrating (although not to education obtained once in Canada), but this has not changed much over the past two decades.