Marry one to be one: the effect of assimilation on immigrants' wages
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Successful assimilation of immigrants into their host country improves immigrants’ labor market outcomes and consequently benefits the host country. I use marriage between an immigrant man and a German woman (intermarriage) as a measure
of assimilation. Married immigrant men might benefit even more from intermarriage
than either single men or those married to other immigrants through legal benefits,
host-country-specific human capital spillovers, network externalities, and improved access to capital markets. I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to estimate the effect
of intermarriage on immigrant men’s wages. After controlling only for observables, I
find that the additional benefit of intermarriage is 4 percentage-points, whereas, this
benefit increases to 12.9 percentage-points once I correct for endogeneity, self-selection,
and reverse causality using an instrumental variables approach. I also study the determinants of intermarriages, characteristics of partners and assortative matching in both
types of marriages. The finding in this paper that increasing immigrants’ association
with Germans benefits immigrants’ wages and consequently the economy is important
for policy makers.
Description
Keywords
Social sciences, Assortative mating, Germany, Immigrant outcomes, Immigrants, Intermarriage, Wages