A number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain recent declines in the education-adjusted entry earnings of immigrants. One hypothesis suggests that the decline has been caused by the immigration of lower ability immigrants—a result of the relatively unequal income distributions of the source countries currently dominating U.S. immigration. Another hypothesis is that the decline in immigrant entry earnings reflects a change in the extent to which immigrant skills are transferred to the United States. The methodology for this study involved measuring the earnings growth of immigrant cohorts across the 1960–80 censuses to examine these two hypotheses.
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