By measuring the earnings growth of immigrant cohorts across the 1960-1980 censuses, we test two potential hypotheses for the decline in the education-adjusted entry earnings of immigrants. One hypothesis suggests that the decline has been caused by the immigration of lower ability immigrants: a...

Cross-sectional estimates of immigrant wage growth have painted an optimistic picture of the ability of immigrants to adapt to the U.S. labor market in that studies using cross-sectional data have generally found immigrant wage growth to exceed that of the native born. This optimistic picture of...

There has been an ongoing concern about the productivity of kinship-based immigrants in the U.S. labor market. Despite the policy importance of this issue, little empirical or theoretical attention has been devoted to learning the effect of different admission criteria on immigrants' economic...

Recent immigrants to the United States are starting their economic lives at substantially lower earnings than previous cohorts of immigrants, even after adjusting for inter-cohort differences in education. The decline in education adjusted earnings--attributed to high family admissions and...