Does Immigration Hurt Low Income Workers?: Immigration and Real Wage Income below the 50th Percentile, Sweden 1993-2003

This paper addresses potential effects of immigration on wage income of predominantly low income Swedish born workers. Using unique individual full population panel data for two time-periods, 1993- 1999 and 1997-2003, we estimate two fixed effect models controlling for both individual and local labor market characteristics as well as individual and regional fixed effects. The models are tested for a range of population sub-groups, the compulsory and upper secondary educated and workers within certain shares of the local income distribution (using different below median percentile levels as population cut-off points). The estimates show mainly a positive relationship between increasing shares of foreign born and wage income of Swedish born workers. <p>