The Portability of Human Capital and Immigrant Assimilation: Evidence for Spain / IZA, August 2008
PDF - http://ftp.iza.org/dp3649.pdf
IZA DP No. 3649
Esteve Sanromá, Raul Ramos, Hipólito Simón:
"The existing literature on immigrant assimilation has highlighted the imperfect portability of human capital acquired by immigrants in their country of origin (Chiswick, 1978; Friedberg, 2000). This would explain the low levels of assimilation upon arrival in the new country, as well as the wide initial earnings gap. Recent studies (Chiswick and Miller, 2007 or Green, Kler and Leeves, 2007, among others) have dealt with this issue from the perspective of over-education. This study analyses the portability of immigrants’ human capital into the Spanish job market according to their geographic origin. It also aims to compare the most notable empirical regularities found in the aforementioned studies with the situation in Spain."