Ethnic minority and migrant pay gaps over the life-cycle
Tessa Hall, Alan Manning and Rebecca Rose
It is well-known that ethnic minority and migrant workers have lower average pay than the White UK-born workforce. However, we know much less about how these gaps vary over the life-cycle because of data limitations. We use new data that combine a 1999?2018 panel from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) with individual characteristics from the 2011 Census in England and Wales. We investigate pay gaps on labour market entry and differences in pay growth. We find that differences in entry pay gaps are more important than differences in pay growth. The entry pay gaps are large, though vary across groups. The pay penalties on labour market entry can, to a considerable degree, be explained by over-representation in lower-paying firms and, within firms, in lower-paying occupations. For most groups, the pay gaps at entry seem to be largely preserved over the life-cycle, neither narrowing nor widening. For migrants, we find that the extra pay penalty is concentrated almost exclusively in those who arrived in the UK at later ages.
22 November 2024
Oxford Review of Economic Policy 40(3) , pp.556-578, 2024
https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/40/3/556/7907284
This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour programme, Community Wellbeing programme, Growth programme.