Educated and Staying at Home: Asian Immigrant Wives’ Labor Force Participation in the U.S. 1

An increasing number of immigrants come from Asian countries to the U.S. Little scholarly attention has been paid to the labor force participation of recent immigrant wives from these countries. By using the New Immigration Survey 2003 (Jasso, Massey, Rosenzweig, & Smith, 2005), this paper examines labor force participation of immigrant women from eastern and central Asian countries. Logistic regression results show that their own educational attainment and prior experience in professional occupation are not a significant predictor of their labor force participation, while their location of education as well as their English proficiently are found to be significant predictors. Moreover, the study found that their reason to migrate significantly influenced their likelihood of labor force participation. These results imply that unlike U.S. born women, the human capital approach does not apply in predicting labor force participation for recent Asian immigrant wives.