Abstract
This paper investigates net wealth of the New Zealand-born (NZ-born) migrants relative to that of Australia-born, and other migrants in Australia. We consider how the free cross-border labour movement between Australia and New Zealand affects the wealth accumulating behaviour of NZ migrants. Our findings indicate that the NZ-born have lower net wealth than both the Australia-born and other migrants. The net wealth differential between the NZ- and Australia-born is mainly explained by the structure effect than from the composition effect (due to differences in observed characteristics, which are similar in both groups). In contrast, comparing with other migrants, the contribution of observed characteristics such as education, age, household composition, weekly wage, and long-term health conditions dominates the overall NZ-born’s net wealth differentials.
Acknowledgements
This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey 2002–2018. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). Only the leading author has an authorized access to the data and worked with the unit record data. The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 Note that property is a direct component of wealth measure, we should not control for in the models