Additional Human Capital Investment of Immigrants in U.S.: Evidence from the National Household Education Survey

Youngok Lim, Drew University

Although additional human capital investment by immigrants can be attributed to the faster growth of earnings for US immigrants, the intersection between immigrants and post-school training, especially in comparison to the US native-born has not been studied by many researchers. To better understand the mechanism behind the economic convergence of immigrants to the US native-born, this study compares the post-school training experience of immigrants to that of the US native-born, using the sample from the National Household Education Survey 2005. This study finds that immigrants are less likely to obtain work-related trainings and enroll in fewer numbers of trainings than the US natives. Further, this gap between immigrants and the US native-born widens for more recent immigrants than for older cohorts of immigrants. However, this is not likely due to the lack of support from employers toward immigrants. It is also found that work-related training is positively associated with annual earnings.