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Immigration and the Human Capital of Natives
- Journal of Human Resources
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Volume 50, Number 1, Winter 2015
- pp. 34-71
- 10.1353/jhr.2015.0002
- Article
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Large low-skilled immigration flows influence both the distribution of local school resources and also local relative wages, which exert counterbalancing pressures on the local return to schooling. I use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) and U.S. Census data to show that low-skilled immigration to an area induces local natives to improve their performance in school, attain more years of schooling, and take jobs that involve communication-intensive tasks for which they (native English speakers) have a comparative advantage. These results point out mechanisms that mitigate the potentially negative effect of immigration on natives’ wages.