Aneta Bonikowska

Reversal of Fortunes or Continued Success? Cohort Differences in Education and Earnings of Childhood Immigrants

Current knowledge about the favourable socioeconomic attainment (in education and earnings) among children of immigrants is based on the experiences of those individuals whose immigrant parents came to Canada before the 1970s. Since then, successive cohorts of adult immigrants have experienced deteriorating entry earnings. This has raised questions about whether the outcomes of their children have changed over time. This study shows that successive cohorts of childhood immigrants who arrived in Canada at age 12 or younger during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s had increasingly higher educational attainment (as measured by the share with university degrees) than their Canadian-born peers by age 25 to 34. Conditional on education and other background characteristics, male childhood immigrants who arrived in the 1960s earned less than the Canadian-born comparison group, but the two subsequent cohorts had similar earnings as the comparison group. Female childhood immigrants earned as much as the Canadian-born comparison group, except for the 1980s cohort, which earned more.

Educational attainment of childhood immigrants: how does immigration type matter?

ABSTRACT This study examines the extent to which the way immigrant parents are selected and admitted matters in the educational attainment of childhood immigrants above and beyond the effects of conventional factors of immigrant vulnerability and resources. Using Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey linked with immigrant landing records, this study finds large differences by admission class in university completion rates for childhood immigrants. Children of skilled workers and business immigrants had much higher university completion rates than children of refugees who, in turn, had higher rates than children of live-in caregivers and in the family class. Advantages or disadvantages associated with the admission class of immigrant parents are passed on to their children, resulting partly from group differences in the education and language ability of parents, and partly from the unique pre- and post-migration circumstances experienced by each immigrant class.

Selections Before the Selection: Earnings Advantages of Immigrants Who Were Former Skilled Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada

This study examines the earnings advantage of economic immigrants who initially arrived as temporary foreign workers (TFWs) over immigrants who were directly selected from abroad. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database, this study finds that skilled versus non‐skilled prior Canadian work experience matters significantly to after‐immigration earnings. Former skilled TFWs had much higher initial earnings than immigrants who first arrived in Canada as landed immigrants. This earnings gap narrowed in the first 10 years but did not disappear. In comparison, former non‐skilled TFWs had significantly lower initial earnings and slower earnings growth than immigrants without prior Canadian experience.