Question
I am working with a researcher who is looking at immigrant integration in communities in Toronto and the Silicon Valley. She has collected data through interviews with the immigrants and want to create a socio-economic ranking with the data she has. However, she is wondering about that ranking being skewed by the education variable – if an immigrant received a University degree in their home country but after immigrating are working at a lower level job, the education variable would affect their socio-economic rank (possibly put them at a higher level). Is there a resource I can point her to that addresses this issue and how to deal with it?
Answer
The Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) could serve to inform the relationship between education at landing (not published since 2010) and long-term economic outcomes (from tax files). For example, table 054-0002 shows “Income of immigrants, by world area, sex, immigrant admission category, education qualifications, knowledge of official languages, and landing year for tax year 2013”: http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=0540002&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=-1&tabMode=dataTable&csid=
