Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T07:52:11.790Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wage and employment effects of immigration: Evidence from South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Hyejin Kim
Hyejin Kim*
Affiliation:
Economic Research Institute, The Bank of Korea, 55 Namdaemun-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: hyjnkm@bok.or.kr
Get access

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of immigration on native labor market outcomes in South Korea. We exploit the variation in immigration flows in an education-experience cell and find that, on average, immigration has no harmful effect on the wages or employment of native workers. However, there is a great heterogeneity of wage effects across education groups: high school dropouts suffer from the adverse effects, whereas the effects for college graduates are positive. We find the potential explanation for these differential effects in the suggestive evidence on the degree of substitution. Specifically, we examine the similarity of occupational distribution between natives and immigrants and assimilation patterns for immigrants.

Keywords

EmploymentimmigrationwagesJ15J31J61
Type
Research Paper
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcobendas, Miguel and Rodríguez-Planas, Núria (2009) Immigrants’ assimilation process in a segmented labor market. IZA Discussion paper No. 4394.Google Scholar
Altonji, Joseph G and Card, David (1991) The effects of immigration on the labor market outcomes of less-skilled natives. In Abowd, John M. and Freeman, Richard B. (eds.), Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, pp. 201–234, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aydemir, Abdurrahman and Borjas, George J. (2007) Cross-country variation in the impact of international migration: Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Journal of the European Economic Association 5(4), 663–708.Google Scholar
Basso, Gaetano and Peri, Giovanni (2015) The association between immigration and labor market outcomes in the United States. IZA Discussion paper No. 9436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonin, Holger (2005) Wage and employment effects of immigration to Germany: evidence from a skill group approach. IZA Discussion paper No. 1875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borjas, George J (2003) The labor demand curve is downward sloping: reexamining the impact of immigration on the labor market. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(4), 1335–1374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borjas, George J (2014) Immigration Economics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borjas, George J, Grogger, Jeffrey and Hanson, Gordon H. (2012) Comment: on estimating elasticities of substitution. Journal of the European Economic Association 10(1), 198–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breunig, Robert, Deutscher, Nathan and To, Hang Thi (2017) The relationship between immigration to Australia and the labour market outcomes of Australian-born workers. Economic Record 93(301), 255–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brücker, Herbert and Jahn, Elke J (2011) Migration and wage-setting: reassessing the labor market effects of migration. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 113(2), 286–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David (2009) Immigration and inequality. American Economic Review 99(2), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David and Lewis, Ethan G. (2007) The diffusion of Mexican immigrants during the 1990s: explanations and impacts. In Borjas, George J. (ed.), Mexican Immigration to the United States, pp. 193–228, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, David and Peri, Giovanni (2016) Immigration economics by George J. Borjas: a review essay. Journal of Economic Literature 54(4), 1333–1349.Google Scholar
Carrasco, Raquel, Jimeno, Juan F. and Ortega, A. Carolina (2008) The effect of immigration on the labor market performance of native-born workers: some evidence for Spain. Journal of Population Economics 21(3), 627–648.Google Scholar
Choi, Kyungsoo (2012) The impact of foreign worker inflow on the natives in Korea. The Korean Journal of Economic Studies 61(3), 159–193, (in Korean).Google Scholar
Dustmann, Christian, Fabbri, Francesca and Preston, Ian (2005) The impact of immigration on the British labour market. The Economic Journal 115(507), F324–F341.Google Scholar
Dustmann, Christian, Schönberg, Uta and Stuhler, Jan (2016) The impact of immigration: why do studies reach such different results? Journal of Economic Perspectives 30(4), 31–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedberg, Rachel M (2001) The impact of mass migration on the Israeli labor market. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116(4), 1373–1408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Kyu-Yong, and Park, Sung-Jae (2009) Employment structure and effects of the foreign workforce. In Jun, Myung-sook (ed.), Labor Issues in South Korea. Seoul: Korea Labor Institute, pp. 26–42.Google Scholar
Manacorda, Marco, Manning, Alan and Wadsworth, Jonathan (2012) The impact of immigration on the structure of wages: theory and evidence from Britain. Journal of the European Economic Association 10(1), 120–151.Google Scholar
Moon, Weh-Sol and Song, Sungju (2016) Estimating labor supply elasticity in Korea. Korean Journal of Labor Economics 39(2), 35–51, (in Korean).Google Scholar
Nam, Jaeryang (2007) A Study on the Labor Supply Effect of Earned Income Tax. Seoul: Korea Labor Institute (in Korean).Google Scholar
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017) The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2019) Recruiting Immigrant Workers: South Korea 2019. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Orrenius, Pia M and Zavodny, Madeline (2007) Does immigration affect wages? A look at occupation-level evidence. Labour Economics 14(5), 757–773.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortega, Javier and Verdugo, Gregory (2014) The impact of immigration on the French labor market: why So different? Labour Economics 29, 14–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. and Peri, Giovanni (2012) Rethinking the effect of immigration on wages. Journal of the European Economic Association 10(1), 152–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peri, Giovanni and Sparber, Chad (2009) Task specialization, immigration, and wages. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(3), 135–169.Google Scholar
Peri, Giovanni and Sparber, Chad (2011) Assessing inherent model bias: an application to native displacement in response to immigration. Journal of Urban Economics 69(1), 82–91.Google Scholar
Smith, Christopher L (2012) The impact of low-skilled immigration on the youth labor market. Journal of Labor Economics 30(1), 55–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinhardt, Max Friedrich (2011) The wage impact of immigration in Germany – new evidence for skill groups and occupations. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 11(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welch, Finis (1999) In defense of inequality. American Economic Review 89(2), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar