Aspects of inequalities: natives and immigrants in the UK

Abstract

This Thesis studies different aspects of inequalities between UK natives and immigrants. It investigates whether economic outcomes of immigrants are different from natives, and tries to spread some light on certain causes of differentials in economic outcomes. It also investigates whether immigrants can potentially contribute to improvement in UK economic inequality. Inequality in education is a result and a cause of inequalities, that perpetuates the income inequality of a country from generation to generation. Do immigrants, who constitute a large share of the UK population, invest more in their children’s education compared with natives? Is it possible that the rising share of immigrants can make society more equal? The first chapter studies intergeneration mobility in education of natives, and second- and third-generation immigrants in the UK. It explores whether intergeneration mobility of second-generation immigrants is different from natives and whether the mobility trends persist for third-generation immigrants. It also tests the direction of mobility to investigate whether children are performing better or worse compared with their parents. The second chapter looks into two other aspects of inequality, wage gaps between natives and second-generation immigrants, and welfare dependency. We introduce an approach that estimates the impact of labour market discrimination on the welfare dependency of immigrants. State welfare policies must be designed efficiently in order to reduce economic inequality, while, at the same time, not creating disincentives. The last chapter estimates the effect of tax credit reforms in the UK on labour supply of natives and first-generation immigrants along the intensive and extensive margins.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Armine Ghazaryan: orcid.org/0000-0001-6950-394X

ORCID for Jackline Wahba: orcid.org/0000-0002-0002-3443

Catalogue record

Export record