TEA.3.6

Description

The use of National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) data in this analysis allows for the differentiation of Mexican from White workers and a focus on only those workers born in the United States. This feature significantly reduces contamination of results from the debilitating human capital effects due to a lack of English language proficiency, foreign education, and many other acculturation factors. Specifically, the massive increase in Hispanic immigration in recent years coupled with the low initial wages that migrants typically command in the open, competitive labor market reflect a deterioration in aggregate human capital. The analysis in this paper is limited to Mexican workers born in the United States and White workers. Mexicans constitute the largest group of Hispanics in the United States; yet they are the lowest paid ethnic group. The second section of this article describes the primary research studies comparing White to Mexican wages. The third section gives an overview of the NLSY data source and the independent variables selected. The fourth section describes the socioeconomic characteristics of both groups. The fifth section details the wage patterns for each comparison group and explores the factors that contribute to market wage differences across groups. The sixth section decomposes the ethnic wage gaps and examines the identified reasons for the wage gap for both Mexican male and female workers. The seventh section highlights some implications this study holds for applied forensic economists. And, the last section presents the summary and conclusion.