Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, DC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 30;17(8):e0273910. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273910. eCollection 2022.
Researchers have long observed that foreign-educated immigrants earn lower wages and hold less-skilled jobs than U.S. natives who have the same level of educational attainment, but the reasons for the disparity have been less clear. This paper tests the hypothesis favored by the human capital model of earnings and employment-namely, that foreign-educated immigrants struggle in the U.S. labor market primarily because they possess fewer marketable skills than workers with U.S. degrees. Standardized tests administered as part of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies reveal that foreign-educated immigrants score 0.82 and 0.54 standard deviations lower on measures of literacy and numeracy, respectively, compared to natives who have the same age and educational attainment. The gaps remain significant after controlling for self-assessed English reading ability. When these skill measures are incorporated into regression analyses, the wage and skilled-employment penalties experienced by foreign-educated immigrants fall by half or more, providing strong evidence for the human capital model. However, this analysis cannot rule out additional explanatory factors, such as legal and social obstacles that foreign-educated immigrants may face.
研究人员长期以来一直观察到，拥有相同教育程度的受过外国教育的移民的工资比美国本地人低，从事的工作技能要求也较低，但造成这种差距的原因不太清楚。本文检验了受人力资本模型收益和就业理论支持的假设，即受过外国教育的移民在美国劳动力市场上举步维艰，主要是因为他们拥有的市场技能比拥有美国学位的工人少。作为成人能力国际评估计划的一部分进行的标准化测试显示，与具有相同年龄和教育程度的本地人相比，受过外国教育的移民在读写和计算能力方面的得分分别低 0.82 和 0.54 个标准差。在控制了自我评估的英语阅读能力后，差距仍然显著。当这些技能衡量标准被纳入回归分析时，受过外国教育的移民所经历的工资和高技能就业的惩罚减少了一半或更多，这为人力资本模型提供了有力证据。然而，这种分析并不能排除其他解释因素，例如受过外国教育的移民可能面临的法律和社会障碍。
