Reassessing the Role of Immigrant Selectivity in Black Ethnic Disparities: A Longitudinal Study of African Americans and Black Immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean

Mosi Ifatunji, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ted Mouw, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Several studies show that Afro Caribbean immigrants outpace African Americans on various measures of socioeconomic status. Yet, today more than half of foreign-born blacks are African. The few studies that have incorporated Africans into this comparative provide mixed results. In this paper, we clarify the nature of these disparities using a large longitudinal data set to compare the earnings trajectories of African Americans and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Our data comes from a unique data set that combines the 1995-2008 Current Population Survey (March CPS) with over-time earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Data (LEHD). This data allows us to estimate the relative earnings growth of these black ethnic groups – net education and the initial process of post-immigration adjustment. As a result, we are able to test for the relative role of immigrant selectivity and labor market discrimination in the manufacture of black ethnic disparities.