Married Immigrants in Britain

The last month in France has not been a happy one for car owners. Much soul searching has followed upon the heels of the unfortunate death of two Parisian boys and the ensuing unrest in Paris's banlieues and elsewhere throughout the country. Opinions are varied, but one thing most people seem to agree on is that the low level of employment among ethnic minorities is an issue.

As unemployment in that country teeters around the 10 per cent mark, hitting 20 percent among the young and twice as much again among young Muslims, it seems France can only look across the English channel at her island neighbour and... yearn. Britain has about half the unemployment rate and, despite the 1981 Brixton riots, it has not seen ethnic unrest anywhere near the type just visited upon France. Those islanders must be doing something right.

But how rosy is actually the employment picture among Britain’s foreign-born ethnic minorities? Christian Dustmann, from University College London and the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), and Francesca Fabbri from the University of Munich and CReAM examine this issue in their recent CESifo Working Paper entitled “Gender and Ethnicity – Married Immigrants in Britain”. They do so by looking at patterns of employment and wages across Britain’s married female ethnic minority immigrants (MEMI) relative to married white native born (MWNB) females.

They find that the employment rate (defined as the ratio between individuals who are in work over the total population of working age) of married minority immigrant women is 47% versus 71% among MWNB women. Even if a smaller proportion of MEMI women work, those that do work tend to work longer: 33 hours versus 29 for MWNBs. They also tend to earn higher hourly wages than their MWNB counterparts, and because they typically work more hours, their weekly earnings tend to be higher still, across each decile of the earnings distribution.

What this suggests is that although less than 50 per cent of married ethnic minority women are working, those who are working are not doing so badly. Something else Dustmann and Fabbri look at is the employment and earnings of the husbands of these MEMI and MWNB women. What does that picture look like? Well, husbands are more likely to work than their wives, but there exists an ethnic gap. Just 72% of the husbands of MEMI women work whereas 84% of their MWNB counterparts do so. MEMI women’s husbands also tend to work fewer hours than husbands of MWNBs: 41 versus 43 hours.

The earnings picture is more nuanced. Intriguingly, in the top 30 per cent of the wage distribution MEMI women’s husbands actually earn more than their MWNB counterparts. Near the bottom of the wage distribution (whence disenchantment typically comes), this is reversed with husbands of MWNBs earning 31 per cent higher wages than husbands of MEMIs.

So, what does this all mean? If ethnic inequality is a cause for concern, not even Britain, despite its enviable record on employment, can afford to be complacent.

Christian Dustmann and Francesca Fabbri: Gender and Ethnicity – Married Immigrants in Britain, CESifo Working Paper No.1598

• Other CESifo Working Papers dealing with immigration
• CESifo Working Papers published in the past three months