Wage Gap Analysis between Francophones, Anglophones and Allophones in Canada (1970-2000), Study notes of Health sciences

Download Wage Gap Analysis between Francophones, Anglophones and Allophones in Canada (1970-2000) and more Study notes Health sciences in PDF only on Docsity! Appendix for “The Wage Gap between Francophones and Anglophones: A Canadian Perspective, 1970 to 2000” Appendix 1 Data Because of changes in the Census questionnaire and in data-processing only some of the Census data across years are fully comparable. Certain procedures, described below, were taken to make the data in this analysis as reliable, uniform, and comparable across years as possible. All data and data-processing files are available upon request. Annual earnings are the sum of “wage and salary income” and “self employment earnings,” both reported for the previous year. Earnings are adjusted to 2000 dollars using the Canadian CPI – All Items, and truncated at $200,000 as this is the lowest truncation cut-off used in all years in real terms. Hourly wages are obtained by dividing annual earnings by weeks worked in the previous year and hours worked. To mitigate measurement problems, the wage sample excludes observations with wage rates of less than $2 per hour or $60 per week. The measure of hours worked available in 1971 differs from that of other years: in 1971 the measure refers to usual hours on the main job in the reference week prior to Census Day; in later years, the measure refers to actual hours worked in all jobs in the reference week. This could produce potential measurement problems in comparing hourly wage changes across years, especially in later years where the reference week does not occur in the previous year from which earnings are taken. However, it is not clear that these measurement problems create any important problems in comparing changes across years of the hourly wage differences between Francophones and Anglophones, or between workers in and out Quebec, as such problems are probably 1 differenced out. In 1971, hours and weeks data are given categorically rather than continuously. Cell means for identical categories in 1981 were calculated and used to impute a continuous measure for each category. In order to ensure full comparability over time, weeks and hours data for years after 1971 were made as coarse as the 1971 data. Comparable data on other socioeconomic characteristics are limited, primarily because of limitations of the 1971 Census. For instance, only coarse categorical information is available on highest grade attained and years of university, while information on college (non-university) education is unavailable except for whether an individual possesses a trade certificate. Since information on educational attainment is typically categorical, potential experience is constructed by subtracting off coarse measures of years spent in elementary, secondary, and university education. These coarse measures of years of education were determined by imputing categorical means from the 1976 Census, which has much finer information on educational attainment. Comparable measures of employment, industry, and occupation (based on “kind of work performed”), given for the main job held in the earnings year for 1971 and for the reference week in later Census years, are made difficult by changes in classification systems. I was able to construct a fairly reliable measure of industry across nine categories for all years. Comparable industry data was obtained by matching the 1980 and 1970 SIC categories industries. According to the 1981 Census a perfect match could be made for the nine coarse groups used except for the “unclassified group” in the 1971 classification scheme, constituting 9 percent of the 1971 data. Those reporting the 2 as in Montreal as in Toronto, controlling for observable characteristics; over the last fifteen years this gap widened to a negative 16 points, more than double the Quebec gap for Anglophones as a whole. This is because wages in Toronto have recently grown faster than in the rest of Canada. Appendix 3 Wages of Allophones and the Return to Language Skills Another method to examine the return to language skills is to look at the wages of Allophones, whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, who speak different combinations of French and English (besides other languages), but have similar observable non-language skills. Allophones are largely immigrants, and the composition of immigrants has changed over time. To help mitigate this problem, native-born Allophones are used in the sample here, in the hope that these immigrants are better assimilated and less prone to changes in composition bias. Figure B graphs the relative wages, both total and residual, of Allophones in various subgroups. From the solid line we see that Canada-wide, Allophone wages have historically been lower than Anglophone wages, although they have converged over time, largely through improvements in observable skills, as the residual differences are much smaller than the total differences. Within Quebec the differences and changes are noisier as relatively few Allophones live in Quebec. However, according to residual wage differences, in 1970 Allophones had wage levels similar to Francophones, and about 14 percent less than Anglophones. Although the intermediate years show a peculiar pattern, by 2000 their wage-levels were similar to that of Anglophones as well as Francophones. Anglophones in Quebec experienced a drop in wages relative to Allophones similar to that of Francophones. 5 6 Table A reports the proportions of Allophones of groups defined by location and language skill groups, together with their total, residual, and predicted wage gaps of these groups relative to monolingual Allophones outside Quebec. An additional line also compares Allophones in Quebec to Allophones outside Quebec. The decompositions use the coefficients estimated from all Canadian Anglophones, as before. Unfortunately, these estimates are subject to even more complicated potential biases than those for the return to bilingualism. In Quebec, Allophones are predominantly and increasingly bilingual, although bilinguals do not appear to earn more than Allophones who speak English only. By 2000, 90 percent of Allophones are bilingual in Quebec, while outside of Quebec very few Allophones speak French. The rate of bilingualism has also increased even while Quebec has taken an increasing share of Canada’s Allophones. In 2000, Allophones in Quebec earn 5 percent less than workers with similar skills outside of Quebec. Statistically, one cannot reject that this was also true in 1970 or that there was zero difference. However, it would appear that wages for Allophones did not fall as precipitously in Quebec as did wages for Anglophones. Other than this insight, the other changes in the residual wage gaps between 1970 and 2000 are so imprecise, that they do not provide much further guidance on changes in the return to language skills. Year Panel A: Proportion of Allophones in Region with Language Skills Quebec, French Only 0.147 (0.033) 0.038 (0.007) -0.108 (0.034) Quebec, English Only 0.349 (0.042) 0.069 (0.009) -0.279 (0.041) Quebec, Bilinguals 0.505 (0.052) 0.892 (0.010) +0.388 (0.053) Non-Quebec, Bilinguals 0.024 (0.004) 0.073 (0.004) +0.049 (0.006) Panel B: Total Wage Gap (vs. Non-Qc, English Only) Quebec, French Only -0.048 (0.125) -0.334 (0.088) -0.286 (0.140) Quebec, English Only -0.016 (0.095) -0.098 (0.070) -0.082 (0.121) Quebec, Bilinguals 0.156 (0.079) -0.025 (0.025) -0.182 (0.080) Non-Quebec, Bilinguals 0.208 (0.118) 0.180 (0.031) -0.028 (0.120) TABLE A Wages of Allophones with Different Language Skills 1970 2000 Difference (1) (2) (3) (Total) Quebec vs. Non-Quebec 0.061 (0.060) -0.055 (0.023) -0.117 (0.066) Panel C: Predicted Wage Gap (vs. Non-Qc, English Only) Quebec, French Only -0.015 (0.087) -0.116 (0.052) -0.101 (0.095) Quebec, English Only 0.066 (0.055) -0.054 (0.029) -0.120 (0.056) Quebec, Bilinguals 0.103 (0.039) 0.020 (0.012) -0.082 (0.040) Non-Quebec, Bilinguals 0.181 (0.076) 0.122 (0.018) -0.059 (0.078) (Total) Quebec vs. Non-Quebec 0.068 (0.029) 0.001 (0.011) -0.067 (0.031) Panel C: Residual Wage Gap (vs. Non-Qc, English Only) Quebec, French Only -0.032 (0.151) -0.217 (0.071) -0.185 (0.172) Quebec, English Only -0.081 (0.080) -0.044 (0.071) +0.038 (0.109) Quebec, Bilinguals 0.054 (0.068) -0.046 (0.024) -0.099 (0.069) Non-Quebec, Bilinguals 0.027 (0.082) 0.058 (0.026) +0.031 (0.086) (Total) Quebec vs. Non-Quebec -0.007 (0.053) -0.056 (0.022) -0.050 (0.057) For male workers in the wage sample, ages 20 to 59. Based off a similar "wages sample" with all those whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, i.e. "Allophones." The first four rows give the difference Allophones of the group stated and Allophones outside Quebec who speak English only. The last row of each panel gives the difference between all Quebec Allophones and all non-Quebec Allophones. Standard errors based off of 100 iterations. See text for further detail.