This paper examines the effect of enclaves on wage growth as well as other labour market outcomes of immigrant men in Canada using the 1981, 1986, 1991 and 1996 Censuses. While the primary measure of affiliation is country of birth, ethnicity, language and visible minority status were also examined to determine the robustness of the findings. Consistent with U.S. findings, enclaves based on country of birth were found to have a negative impact on the ten-year wage growth of immigrants. Further, the model for wage growth was found to be robust to different lengths of time and different base years as well as the specification of language and ethnicity as the affiliation grouping. While the evidence indicates a negative effect of enclaves on wage growth, little evidence is found of the effects of enclaves on change in employment. While the overall effect of enclaves on wage growth was negative, enclaves were found to have a divergent effect on different landing cohorts, having a positive impact on the wage growth of the more recent cohorts and a negative impact on earlier cohorts. JEL Codes: J15, J24, J31, J61

Economic outcomes of former Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) and former international students (ISs) are compared to those of Skilled Worker Principal Applicants who have no Canadian experience at the time of landing. Controlling for only variables from the immigration points system, former TFWs have both higher earnings and employment rates, while ISs are no lower. When models are estimated separately by gender, male immigrants who were former TFWs have superior outcomes. Overall, the evidence provides support for the Canadian Experience Class in that former TFW, and to a lesser extent IS, status provides signals regarding immigrants' labour market integration.

Public-place smoking restrictions are the most important non-price tobacco control measures worldwide, yet surprisingly little is known about their effects on exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). We study these laws in Canada using data with questions about respondents' ETS exposure in public and private places. In fixed-effects models we find these laws had no effects on smoking but induced large and statistically significant reductions in public-place ETS exposure, especially in bars and restaurants. We do not find evidence of substantial ETS displacement to private places. Our results indicate wide latitude for health improvements from banning smoking in public places.

This paper documents two COVID-related risks, viral risk and employment risk, and their distributions across the Canadian population. The measurement of viral risk is based on the VSE COVID Risk/Reward Assessment Tool, created to assist policymakers in determining the impacts of economic shutdowns and reopenings over the course of the pandemic. We document that women are more concentrated in high viral risk occupations and that this is the source of their greater employment loss over the course of the pandemic so far. They were also less likely to maintain one form of contact with their former employers, reducing employment recovery rates. Low educated workers face the same virus risk rates as high educated workers but much higher employment losses. Based on a rough counterfactual exercise, this is largely accounted for by their lower likelihood of switching to working from home which, in turn, is related to living conditions such as living in crowded dwellings. For both women and the low educated, existing inequities in their occupational distributions and living situations have resulted in them bearing a disproportionate amount of the risk emerging from the pandemic. Assortative matching in couples has tended to exacerbate risk inequities.

The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Canada or the National Bureau of Economic Research. All errors are our own. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Public-place smoking restrictions are the most important non-price tobacco control measures worldwide, yet surprisingly little is known about their effects on exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). We study these laws in Canada using data with questions about respondents' ETS exposure in public and private places. In fixed-effects models we find these laws had no effects on smoking but induced large and statistically significant reductions in public-place ETS exposure, especially in bars and restaurants. We do not find evidence of substantial ETS displacement to private places. Our results indicate wide latitude for health improvements from banning smoking in public places.

A substantial economics literature documents that tighter alcohol controls reduce alcohol-related harms, but far less is known about mechanisms. We use the universe of Canadian mortality records to document that Canada’s Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) significantly reduces mortality rates of young men but has much smaller effects on women. Using drinking data that are far more detailed than in prior work, we document that the MLDA substantially reduces ‘extreme’ drinking among men but not women. Our results suggest that alcohol control efforts targeting young adults should focus on reducing extreme drinking behavior.

Given the declining returns to pre-migration labour market experience, human capital portability is explored for new immigrants focusing on pre- and post-immigration occupational matching, and its interactions with education and language. New immigrants who match occupations obtain an earnings premium, but surprisingly, on average, even they obtain no return to their pre-migration labour market experience. Only males with substantial English proficiency who also match occupations receive any return to such experience. Moreover, occupational matching and English skills are also seen to interact with education in an unexpected way. For both sexes, only those with a match and/or strong English proficiency obtain a positive return to their schooling. The commonly observed low rate of return to education for new immigrants appears to be a combination of zero for some and a large return for others. Of the varieties of human capital studied, only English language skills are universally rewarded.