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Immigrants' income has been proved to converge to the average
native income level with years of residence in the host country.
This income assimilation effect is surprisingly not associated
with a health improvement. While most of the literature has
underlined the role of acculturation as a driver of the
counterfactual relation between immigrants' health and income,
some emerging studies point towards the role of working
conditions. However, according to Viscusi (1978) working
conditions are a normal good and income assimilation should lead
to an improvement in working conditions. This paper exploits two
distinct French databases merged with national industry statistics
on professional injuries and illnesses to test (i) whether
immigrants bear in average worse working conditions than natives,
(ii) whether working conditions are a normal good and (iii) if
income assimilation of immigrants has induced an improvement in
their working conditions. We find that in average immigrants bear
worse working conditions than natives. This divergence seems
though to result from an income effect driven by the fact that
working conditions are a normal good. For an equivalent non-earned
income level there are no significant differences in working
conditions between natives and immigrants. Bad working conditions
cannot be blamed for the degradation of immigrants' health with
years of residence in the host country.
