Immigrant Advantage: An Empirical Study of Earnings: African and Caribbean Women in the US

Abstract

This paper examines the earnings of black African and Caribbean immigrant women, in comparison to non-Hispanic US born black women, using data from the 2000 Census and 2007-2011 American Community Surveys. Africans were disaggregated into refugee and non-refugee groups, native Blacks were split into movers and non-movers, and Caribbean immigrants were divided into English French and Spanish speaking Caribbeans. Results show that in both 2000 and 2007-20111, both African and Caribbean women had significantly higher earnings than comparable native black women. However, the magnitude of the immigrant advantage declined between the two time periods. Furthermore the level of advantage varied across sub-groups within the broader group-origin categories such that nonrefugee Africans and English speaking Caribbeans consistently fared better than refugee Africans and Spanish speaking Caribbeans, respectively.