Study: Dark-Skinned Immigrants Experience More Wage Discrimination in the United States: "Recent immigrants with darker skin tones earn less money on average than their lighter-skinned peers, according to research that will be presented Feb. 19 in San Francisco at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Joni Hersch, a professor of law and economics at Vanderbilt University, found that a lighter-skinned immigrant would earn the equivalent of what a darker-skinned immigrant with an extra year of education would earn.
The basis for the study was the New Immigrant Survey 2003, funded by several federal government agencies and the Pew Charitable Trust. The survey took a random sample of 8,500 new legal immigrants over a seven-month period in 2003. Participants were from geographically diverse countries and were interviewed at the location where their green cards were delivered to ensure geographic diversity in the United States as well, Hersch says.
Several other factors were taken into consideration as controls, including people’s actual level of education, English proficiency, work history, occupation, visa status, race, ethnicity and nationality. Despite this, Hersch says there was an 8 percent to 15 percent variable from lightest to darkest skin tone in terms of earnings once immigrants were in the United States."
