The Changing Effect of Education on Asian Immigrants' Self-employment and Earnings

• In Event: 182 - Regular Session. Labor Market

Abstract

This article examines the changes in the effect of education on Asian immigrants’ self-employment and their self-employment rate between the 1970-1989 and 1990-2011 cohorts, based on the 1990 Census 5% sample and the 2007-2011 American Community Survey 5-year sample. The authors used the ethnic and class recourses thesis and the thesis emphasizing disadvantages for employment in the general labor market as two major theoretical orientations. The 1979-1989 Asian immigrants, predominantly family-based immigrants, include a large proportion of college-educated people who couldn’t find meaningful occupations commensurate with their educational level due to their language barrier and other disadvantages. Many turned to self-employment in small businesses using their ethnic and class resources. As expected, our data analyses show that education has a positive effect on Asian immigrants’ self-employment for the 1970-1989 cohort. The Immigration Act of 1990 led to a phenomenal increase in the proportion of specialty occupation immigrants and H1B visa holders among Asian immigrants. As a result, the college-educated post-1990-2011 Asian immigrants were more successful in finding occupations commensurate with their education. As a result, education had a negative effect on the self-employment of the post-1990 Asian immigrants, who also had a substantially lower self-employment rate than the earlier cohort.

Authors

• Pyong Gap Min, City Univ of New York-Queens Coll

• Chigon Kim, Wright State University