賃金の規定要因からみた日本生まれの在米日本人の特徴―アメリカン・コミュニティ・サーベイを用いた分析―

抄録

By applying a nonlinear regression analysis to the micro data of the 2005-2007 American Community Surveys, this study focuses mainly on the dependence of the wages of male and female Japanese-born residents in the United States on (1) current age, (2) educational attainment, (3) the length of stay in the host country, and (4) the age at entry. To achieve better insights, the Japan-born residents are compared with their counterparts born in India, the Philippines, and Germany. Our main finding is that the wage pattern of Japanese-born males is radically different from those of their Indian-born and Philippine-born counterparts: (1) their wage level rises sharply as their current age increases from 25-29 to 45-49, (2) the wage premium of achieving a post-graduate degree over bachelor’s degree is very small and statistically insignificant, (3) the wage level of recent arrivals is substantially higher than that of earlier arrivals, and (4) those who arrived at relatively older ages earn substantially higher wages. In addition to the fact that many of these Japanese-born males were dispatched from Japan by Japanese corporations, this paradoxical finding suggests that their wage pattern is influenced substantially by Japan’s social norms and employment practices. Being relegated to secondary economic roles or excluded from the Japanese employment system, Japanese-born females have diverse psychological and socioeconomic reasons for migrating to the United States and are found to have a wage pattern that deviates less from those of their counterparts born in India and the Philippines. Although the wage pattern of German-born males also deviates to some extent from those of their Indian-born and Philippine-born counterparts, they differ markedly from Japanese-born males in having a very large wage premium for having completed postgraduate education.

Our main contribution lies in highlighting that in understanding the immigrants of a host country, it is important to pay attention to the socioeconomic conditions of the country of origin.