A Different Land of Opportunity: The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the Early Twentieth-Century United States

Tan, Hui Ren

doi:10.1086/718595

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Our analysis of location choices is motivated by two facts. First, rates of intergenerational mobility both historically and today vary greatly by region (Chetty et al 2017, Tan 2018, Connor 2019. Second, previous research shows that first-generation immigrants are 43 Similarly, using the 10% sample of the 1880 Census, we see that sons of immigrant fathers who are aged 12-16 in the earlier cohort are 8 percentage points less likely to be attending school than sons of US-born fathers (57 versus 65 percent).…”

Section: Location Choicesmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…A number of papers estimate contemporary levels of intergenerational mobility in the United States (e.g., Chetty et al 2014Chetty et al , 2017Davis and Mazumder 2017;Hilger 2016;Lee and Solon 2009;Mazumder 2015). 5 A series of related studies document historical rates of intergenerational mobility, and compare these historical rates to present-day levels (e.g., Card, Domnisoru, and Taylor 2018;Derenoncourt 2019;Feigenbaum 2015Feigenbaum , 2018Ferrie et al 2016;Long and Ferrie 2013;Olivetti and Paserman 2015;Olivetti, Paserman, and Salisbury 2018;Tan 2018). Borjas (1992) develops a theory of ethnic capital, which suggests that the social mobility process may differ between immigrants and the US-born.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US over Two Centuries

Abramitzky¹,

Boustan²,

Jácome³

et al. 2019

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Using millions of father-son pairs spanning more than 100 years of US history, we find that children of immigrants from nearly every sending country have higher rates of upward mobility than children of the US-born. Immigrants' advantage is similar historically and today despite dramatic shifts in sending countries and US immigration policy. In the past, this advantage can be explained by immigrants moving to areas with better prospects for their children and by "underplacement" of the first generation in the income distribution. These findings are consistent with the "American Dream" view that even poorer immigrants can improve their children's prospects.

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Section: Location Choicesmentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US over Two Centuries

Abramitzky¹,

Boustan²,

Jácome³

et al. 2019

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“…Perhaps the most striking result in their paper is the strong positive correlation between education mobility for the 1920s cohort and income mobility for the 1980–1983 cohort, as measured by Chetty et al (2014) across the counties of the US. In contrast, Tan (2018) also considered the early 20th century experience using census data, finding that the geography of mobility looks somewhat different to today.…”

Section: Related Research and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the Land of Hope and Glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales*

Bell¹,

Blundell

Machin

2023

Scandinavian J Economics

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Does the importance of your family background on how far you get in adulthood also depend on where you grow up? For England and Wales, a paucity of data has made this a difficult question to reliably answer. This paper presents a new analysis of intergenerational mobility across three cohorts in England and Wales using hitherto previously unstudied linked decennial census microdata. These data permit study of mobility in occupation, home ownership and education, at the spatial level through time. In the aggregate, there is little overall change in occupational mobility, but a substantial decline in home ownership mobility over the late 20th century in England and Wales. The picture for educational mobility is less clear, because higher education expanded dramatically. In terms of geographical variation, there are strong sub-regional patterns, with four main results emerging. First, area-level differences in upward occupational mobility are highly persistent over time. Second, consistent with evidence from other countries, absolute and relative mobility are positively correlated for all measures and particularly strongly for home ownership. Third, there is a robust relationship between upward educational and upward occupational mobility. Last, there is a small negative relationship between upward home ownership mobility and upward occupational mobility, revealing that social mobility comparisons based on different outcomes can have different trends.

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“…His reference to "bad ghettos" refers to the negative correlation between the level of residential segregation and black labor market outcomes, which strengthens after 1970 (Cutler andGlaeser 1997, Collins andMargo 2000). Though not focused on racial disparities, Tan (2019) emphasizes the importance of local labor markets for intergenerational mobility in the early twentieth century in contrast to the emphasis on childhood environment in more recent decades. 10 Featherman and Hauser (1976) and Hout (1984) also study racial differences in the OCG data, including the second wave of the survey taken in 1973.…”

Section: B Closely Related Work On Black-white Differences In Interge...mentioning

confidence: 99%

African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility since 1880

Collins

Wanamaker

2022

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

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We document the intergenerational mobility of Black and White American men from 1880 through 2000 by building new historical datasets for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and combining them with modern data to cover the middle and late twentieth century. We find large disparities in mobility, with White children having far better chances of escaping the bottom of the distribution than Black children in every generation. This mobility gap was more important in proximately determining each generation's racial gap than was the initial gap in parents' economic status. (JEL D31, J15, J62, N31, N32)

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A Different Land of Opportunity: The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the Early Twentieth-Century United States

Cited by 14 publications

References 23 publications

Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US over Two Centuries

Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US over Two Centuries

Where is the Land of Hope and Glory? The geography of intergenerational mobility in England and Wales*

African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility since 1880

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