Gender Wage Differentials among Immigrants and Native-born Canadians

Abstract

Using data from the 2006 Canadian Census, this paper investigates gender wage differentials and their determinants among immigrants and native-born Canadians aged 25 to 64. The factors that affect the gender wage differentials for both immigrants and Canadian-born include education attainment, work experience, marital status, the presence of children, weeks worked, and part-time working status. Additionally, immigration specific variables are taken into account for the analysis of immigrants. This paper finds that the total gender wage differentials are similar among immigrant and the Canadian-born workers, in both the all workers group and the full-time and full-year workers group. Differences in coefficients (sometimes called discrimination) make a larger contribution in explaining the gender wage differential for the Canadian-born than for the immigrants. In addition, the different return to work experience plays a larger effect on the gender wage differential for immigrants than for Canadian-born. Also, the gender wage differential for Canadian-born is more affected by the different return to education attainment than that for immigrants.