Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five Europea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cliometrica 2017-05, Vol.11 (2), p.153-182
Main Authors: Armstrong, Alex, Lewis, Frank D.
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Borrowing
Costs
Discount rates
Earnings
Econometrics
Economic conditions
Economic history
Economic models
Economic statistics
Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods
Economics
Economics and Finance
Emigration
Finance
History
History of Economic Thought/Methodology
Immigration
Immigration policy
Income distribution
Insurance
Labor economics
Management
Migration
Noncitizens
Occupations
Original Paper
Statistics for Business
Studies
Wage differential
Wages & salaries
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Summary:As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five European countries: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, are explored in a way that sheds light not just on those population flows but on the process of immigration generally. We draw on passenger manifests from immigrant ships for information on the individual migrants. Simulations, based partly on the these manifests, reveal that the costs of migration, borrowing constraints, concern for status, and country-specific taste preferences account for key immigrant characteristics, and help explain the large wage differentials that persisted despite Canada’s relatively open immigration policy.
ISSN:1863-2505
1863-2513