Working Their Way Up? US Immigrants' Changing Labor Market Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

Whether immigrants advance in labor markets relative to natives is a fundamental question in immigration economics. It is difficult to answer this question for the Age of Mass Migration, when US immigration was at its peak. New datasets of linked census records show that immigrants experienced substantial "catching up" relative to natives' occupational status from 1850 to 1880, but not from 1900 to 1930. This change was not due to the shift in immigrant source countries. Instead, it was rooted in a sizable change in natives' occupations. The results revise the influential view that European immigrants "worked their way up".

El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II

“…We contribute to the literature on how across-generation assimilation has changed over time (e.g., Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson 2020;Borjas 1994;Card, DiNardo, and Estes 2000;Perlmann 2005;Smith 2006). 2 Note that this literature and our paper take an intergenerational perspective of assimilation, which differs from the traditional focus on first-generation assimilation (e.g., Abramitzky, Platt Boustan, and Eriksson 2014;Borjas 2015;Collins and Zimran 2019a;Hatton 2000;Minns 2000). When using imputed income over time, we show with repeated cross sections that Mexican American generational progress is more rapid today than 100 years ago.…”

“…For example, the income score methodology estimates zero convergence for African Americans and a 56 percent Black-white income score gap in 1940, which contrasts with the (small) per capita income convergence and larger 62 percent income gap estimated using a different methodology in Margo (2016). Looking instead at changes in the occupational distribution, there were some gains in occupational status at the lower end of the distribution, which is likely the result of structural transformation in the economy (Collins and Zimran 2019a Differences in geographical location across Mexicans and non-Mexican whites do not explain the lack of income score convergence (see Table 1). In fact, there is often evidence for divergence after controlling for geographic location.…”

“…While European descendants experienced upward mobility relative to U.S.-born whites (Abramitzky et al 2019;Collins and Zimran 2019b), Mexican immigrants and their descendants faced additional barriers to progress (Fox and Guglielmo 2012). The working conditions for the first generation were poor, such that they likely limited investment in the next generation.…”

“…The subsequent cohort who entered by 1910 had a slightly smaller gap with non-Mexican whites (income ratio of 54 percent) but also did not converge toward non-Mexican whites by 1940 (ratio of 55 percent). The lack of convergence is surprising because not only was the second generation reared in the United States, but the third generation was raised by two parents who were raised in the American environment-an environment that benefited first-and second-generation Europeans (Alexander and Ward 2018;Abramitzky et al 2019;Collins and Zimran 2019b). Further, the second and third generations should have enjoyed the benefits of citizenship, though it is unclear whether these benefits were accessible to Mexican Americans (Catron 2019).…”

Life after crossing the border: Assimilation during the first Mexican mass migration

“…This paper complements the intergenerational analysis of Mexican outcomes in Kosack and Ward (2020). The primary difference is that we focus on intragenerational assimilation, like in Hatton (1997), Minns (2003), Abramitzky et al (2014), and Collins and Zimran (2019). This paper also covers more key periods of the Mexican mass migration since the data observes 1900-1929 cohorts, while Kosack and Ward (2020) only observe pre-Revolutionary immigrants.…”