摘要：While most studies of the decision to immigrate focus on the absolute income
differences between countries, we argue that relative change in purchasing power
or status, as captured by an individual’s ranking in the wage distribution, may
also be important. This will in turn be influenced by differential levels of
supply, demand and migration costs across the skill distribution and across
countries. Using data on Indian immigrants in the United States and the UK
matched to comparable data on individuals who remained in India, we show that
the average Indian immigrant will experience a fall in their relative ranking in
the wage distribution compared to the position they would have achieved had they
remained in the origin country. The fall in relative rankings is larger for
immigrants to the UK than to the US, and largest of all for those with
intermediate skills.
