Chutes or Ladders? A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrant Earnings
利用社会保障记录中的纵向收入数据，研究发现低工资移民的离境导致以往研究高估了留美移民的工资进步，移民与本地人的收入差距在头20年缩小10-15%，速度约为传统横截面估计的一半。
I use longitudinal earnings data from Social Security records to study the effect of selective emigration on the measured progress of im-migrants to the United States. The immigrant-native earnings gap closes by 10–15 percent during immigrants ’ first 20 years in the United States, or about half as fast as typical estimates from repeated cross sections of the decennial census. The divergent results indicate that emigration by low-wage immigrants has systematically led past re-searchers to overestimate the wage progress of immigrants who remain in the United States. Selective back-and-forth migration also leads typical estimates to overstate the measured decline in earnings among successive immigrant arrival cohorts between 1960 and 1980. I.