Using 1991 to 2011 data from Hong Kong, this paper documents how the earnings distribution of immigrant and native workers changed over time and how the pattern differs by gender. To understand how immigrants of different origins relate to earnings inequality in Hong Kong, I decompose earnings inequality to explore how the changes in immigrants’ share of total earnings have affected the inequality. I find that the increase in overall inequality can be explained by the increase in the within-group variance of natives. Further, I find that a large part of the within-group inequality resulted from the change in the share of employees and that the reduced share of Chinese immigrant employees contributed to decreasing inequality among men A large part of within-group inequality among women came from wage dispersion. A nonnegligible part of the increase in inequality among women was due to the expansion of between-group variance associated with the large inflow of foreign domestic helpers. Once I removed the foreign domestic helpers from the analysis, the pattern of wage inequality became similar for men and women. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

earnings inequality immigrants Hong Kong Gender

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