Economics Working Papers

Addressing the Low Returns to Education of African Born Immigrants in the United States

Jongsung Kim et al. — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:22:42 PST

This paper uses 2000 Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample to investigate the relative earning pattern of immigrants from African countries, and explores the relevance of existing explanations of the low returns to education. The study uses the Extreme Bound Analysis to check the robustness of the variables of interests. The empirical findings from the conventional earnings regression conform to the theoretical expectations. However, not all the variables of interests are robust in Extreme Bound Analysis. This suggests that conventional specifications may not encompass all necessary information. Future study may explicitly controls for more detailed country-specific characteristics of the immigrant-sending countries.

U.S. Gender Occupational Segregation and Earnings Gap in the 1990s

Jongsung Kim — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 09:34:19 PST

Using Current Population Survey (CPS) and Census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), this paper makes a descriptive inquiry into the changes of gender occupational segregation and the earnings gap in the U.S. labor market during the 1990s. This paper found that throughout the decade, including a brief recession in the early 1990s, there has been an upward mobility in the occupational distribution. More specifically, the occupational distribution has been fairly stable with a slight but consistent increase in the relatively prestigious occupational categories, and a modest but sustained decrease in the relatively less prestigious occupational categories. This finding suggests that the more symmetric occupational distribution between male and female workers, along with upward mobility of female workers, will continue to drive the gain in female workers? earnings - possibly resulting in the narrower earnings differences between male and female workers in the future.

Returns to College Education: Analysis on Hispanic Workers

Jongsung Kim — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 08:40:37 PST

This paper investigates the trend of the returns to college education and earnings gap between college graduates and non-college graduates of Hispanic workers from 1994 to 2001, and compares the results to the patterns of non-Hispanic White workers. The most striking result is the extremely high returns to college education of Hispanic workers relative to White workers. The significant differences in the patterns of the returns to college education along with higher college premium for Hispanic workers shed a light on which areas public and educational policies should address.

Awakening of the New Gender Earnings Gap: A Study of the 1990's Economic Expansion in the U.S. Labor Market

Jongsung Kim — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:20:50 PST

Defying all rational expectations, the longest expansion in the U.S. economy in the 1990s has failed to reduce the gender earnings gap. Empirical results based on Current Population Survey (CPS) show that the gender earnings gap widened from 1994 to 2001. The pattern of gender earnings gap described by the results of a decomposition analysis, overall and across three broadly defined occupation categories, is extremely consistent, indicating that women were adversely affected in comparison with men during the economic expansion in the 1990s. Although slight, this undeniable failure was not only present in women's relatively weaker economic position as a whole, but it also crossed all occupational boundaries, extending its reach to the workers with blue-collar occupations. The result of a slightly widened gender earnings gap casts doubt on expectation of narrowing of the gap developed over the past several decades. In light of this new finding, future labor policy should focus on changing labor market structure to ameliorate the factors that fail to treat females and males equally to narrow the gender earnings gap.