This article (free) in The Economist has some caption text that states, More foreigners than ever are coming to London, and more Britons are leaving. But more interesting is the comment on the type of immigration that is occurring in London.
Who are these people? The mix has changed since the 1970s brought mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. These days, they come from everywhere—though, according to a Home Office report published in 2002, the proportion from high-income countries (as defined by the World Bank) is relatively high. While 67% of new immigrants to Britain come from high-income countries, 30% of those into Germany and 24% of those into France do. And Britain has more top foreign bosses (see article) than Germany, France or America.There’s something in the standard picture of the American banker and the Somali cleaner. Immigrants are economically polarised. Compared with the locals, more have degrees, but more have no qualifications at all (though that is partly explained by the fact that so many of them are students). On average, they earn 19% more than locals, but that disguises some sharp variations. White immigrants, by and large, earn quite a bit more than locals. Brown and black ones earn less.
Bimodal y’all….
Here’s a graph for comparison to other cities, indicating the sheer magnitude (surprised me!):
Any comments David B?
Godless comments:
This statement: Brown and black ones earn less. is a bit inaccurate. Indians earn more than native British, while Pakistanis and Bangladeshis earn less.
The largest group analysed by the research consisted of families below pensionable age with at least one worker. Chinese and Indian working families averaged slightly higher earnings than white people. Overall, Caribbean and African earnings were significantly lower than whites’, though this was not true for black women. Pakistani and Bangladeshi families’ earnings were much lower than those of any other ethnic group – partly because of low wages, but also because relatively few married women in these groups had a job.
Point: there’s bimodality within the Asian population in Britain , just as there is in the immigrant population at large (as Razib remarked) and as there is in the US. Now, as for blacks…here is a very interesting statistic that seems to indicate that black British are *likewise* bimodal:
Education
- Indian girls and boys in England and Wales, were more likely to get five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C than their White, Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts.
- 66% of Indian girls and 54% of Indian boys achieved this in 1999.
- In 2001/02, people from Chinese, Indian, Black African and Other Asian groups were more likely to have degrees than White people in the UK.
- Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were the most likely to be unqualified.
Does anyone else have any data on the sample sizes, ethnic & educational backgrounds, etcetera of the Black Africans present in the UK? I’m aware that blacks in the UK are much more likely to intermarry…but it seems like the intermarrying group is largely that of black Caribbeans. But that’s curious – based on the socioeconomic trends for intermarriage in the US detailed in this post, I would have expected black Africans with matched IQs, educations, and incomes to show high intermarriage rates…rather than black Caribbeans. I know there’s a bit of confounding data, because black British are also more likely to commit crimes when taken as a monolithic group…so even anecdotal leads would be much appreciated.
Update from Razib:
Here is a chart from an old post:
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