Brain waste? Educated immigrants in the U.S. labor market

By Aaditya Mattoo, Ileana Cristina Neagu, Caglar Ozden. 2005

390 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The authors investigate the occupational placement of immigrants in the U.S. labor market using census data. They find striking differences among highly educated immigrants from different countries, even after they control for individuals' age, experience, and level of education. With some exceptions, educated immigrants from Latin American and Eastern European countries are more likely to end up in unskilled jobs than immigrants from Asia and industrial countries. A large part of the variation can be explained by attributes of the country of origin that influence the quality of human capital, such as expenditure on tertiary education and the use of English as a medium of instruction. Performance is adversely affected by military conflict at home which may weaken institutions that create human capital and lower the threshold quality of immigrants. The selection effects of U.S. immigration policy also play an important role in explaining cross-country variation. The observed under-placement of educated migrants might be alleviated if home and host countries cooperate by sharing information on labor market conditions and work toward the recognition of qualifications.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/31f84799dfa5ef37b8a33f03dfc410a5f4c51b1b

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Citations in the corpus

Occupation–education mismatch of immigrant workers in Europe: Context and policies (2013, background): “One of the exceptions is Mattoo, Neagu, and Ozden (2008), who explain significant differences in the occupational attainment of immigrants in the US from different origin countries by quality of human capital and selection effects.”
Report No. 19: Geographic Mobility in the European Union: Optimising its Economic and Social Benefits (2008, background): “26 Mincer (1978) argues that, when talking about migration in a family context, women can be characterised as “tied movers”.”
Immigrant over-education: evidence from Denmark (2007, positive): “Low educational quality, credential problems and mismatches in technological requirements can mean that education and experience obtained in certain other countries are not as productive in the host country as education and experience acquired here (Ferrer et al. 2006; Mattoo et al. 2005; Friedber”
Migration Remittances and Development: A Review of Global Evidence (2006, background): “Borjas (1987), Jasso and Rosenzweig (1986) and Dullep and Regets (1996) Mattoo et al. (2005) found that the immigrants from English-speaking countries perform better than immigrants from non-English-speaking countries in the U.S. Kee (1993) analysis the earnings of Dutch immigrants from Turkey,…”
Eight Questions About Brain Drain (2011, methodology): “Mattoo, Neagu, and Özden (2008) note that there is often a concern that”
The human resource challenge to outward foreign direct investment aspirations from emerging economies: the case of China (2007, background): “Mattoo et al. (2005) found that, with some exceptions, this situation was more pervasive for Latin American and Eastern European immigrants to the US, where more ‘skilled immigrants end up in unskilled jobs’.”