How Do Immigrants Spend Their Time? The Process of Assimilation

No 5010, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using 2004-2008 data from the American Time Use Survey, we show that sharp differences between the time use of immigrants and natives become noticeable when activities are distinguished by incidence and intensity. We develop a theory of the process of assimilation – what immigrants do with their time – based on the notion that assimilating activities entail fixed costs. The theory predicts that immigrants will be less likely than natives to undertake such activities, but conditional on undertaking them, immigrants will spend more time on them than natives. We identify several activities – purchasing, education and market work – requiring the most interaction with the native world, and these activities more than others fit the theoretical predictions. Additional tests suggest that the costs of assimilating derive from the costs of learning English and from some immigrants’ unfamiliarity with a high-income market economy. A replication using the 1992 Australian Time Use Survey yields remarkably similar results.

Keywords: incidence; fixed costs; time use; intensity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2010-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2013, 26 (2), 507-530

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp5010.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How do immigrants spend their time? The process of assimilation (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5010

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().