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Author: Kim, Hyun Jae
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Kim, Hyun Jae
Three Essays on Economics of Immigration
Ph.D. Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995. DAI-A 57/02, p. 800, Aug 1996
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Fertility; Immigrants; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission

This dissertation is a collection of papers examining the performance and economic behavior of immigrants in the U.S. Each of the chapters is self-contained. Chapter one investigates the determinants of English language proficiency and compares immigrants in the 1980 and 1990 Censuses. It also studies the effect of English ability on the human capital earnings function in order to determine the performance and quality of recent immigrant cohorts in the U.S. labor market. In addition, this study examines whether English proficiency is a good measure of assimilation of immigrants into the U.S. labor market. This study shows that English proficiency is positively related to earnings of immigrants. Educational attainment, citizenship, and age at arrival are major determinants of English proficiency. In particular, education attained in the U.S. is more relevant to improving English proficiency. According to the regression results, the assimilation process is a significant phenomenon among recent immigrants. Also, the similar patterns of growth rates between earnings and English proficiency suggest that English proficiency can be used as a measure of economic adjustment of immigrants in the U.S. labor market. Chapter two examines fertility differences between native-born and immigrant women in the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Censuses, focusing on how fertility differences are related to female labor supply. Immigrant women with children might have a different pattern of labor supply relative to their native-born counterparts. In order to investigate this relationship, a simultaneous equations model of fertility and labor supply is applied to study the fertility and labor supply behavior of immigrant women. The main findings in this study are summarized by the following. First, recent immigrant cohorts have more children than native-born women. However, it is not evident that the immigrant fertility pattern shows an increasing relative fertility over time. Second, immigrant women and native-born women differ in their fertility and labor supply behavior. Immigrant women's labor supply is negatively related to their number of children, but this significant negative correlation is not found for native-born women. Chapter three attempts to compare the fertility patterns across immigrant generations from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, 1979-1991. The results provide some evidence of immigrants' convergence to the fertility rate of natives across generations. One of the major findings of this chapter is that grandchildren of immigrants have fewer children than the reference group (the fourth or later generations). Second, the correlation of the number of siblings with the number of children is quite low. This implies that the correlation across generations is weaker the longer immigrant families are in the U.S.
Bibliography Citation
Kim, Hyun Jae. Three Essays on Economics of Immigration. Ph.D. Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995. DAI-A 57/02, p. 800, Aug 1996.