A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

During the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913), the United States maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but converged over time. In newly assembled panel data, we show that, in fact, the average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival and experienced occupational advancement at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by biases from declining arrival cohort skill level and departures of negatively selected return migrants. We show that assimilation patterns vary substantially across sending countries and persist in the second generation.

Immigration in American Economic History

“…Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson (2014) find that if first-generation immigrants from a sending country out-performed natives (e.g., immigrants from England or Russia), so too did the second generation, whereas if the first generation held lower-paid occupations than natives (e.g., immigrants from Norway or Portugal), the second generation did as well. Yet, the partial convergence in the past was faster than inter-generational convergence for some country-of-origin groups today.…”

“…Second, historical work is more likely to measure the flow of new migrants into the US using passenger lists, whereas the contemporary literature often analyzes the stock of immigrants observed in the US Census at a point in time (e.g., Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005). These two methods need not produce the same answer if return migration is also selective (existing evidence suggests that this is the case; see, for example, Lubotsky, 2007; Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2014; Ward, 2015). …”

“…Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson (2014) build a panel dataset of natives and immigrants from 16 sending European countries from 1900 to 1920. The average long-term immigrant in the panel data held similarly-paying occupations to the native born upon first arrival and moved up the occupational ladder at the same rate, neither converging with nor diverging from the native born.…”

“…Immigrants from sending countries with real wages above the European median, such as England and France, held significantly higher-paid occupations than US natives upon first arrival, while immigrants from sending countries with below-median wages (e.g., Norway, Portugal) started out in equal or lower-paid occupations (Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson, 2014). 53 Yet, immigrants from all sending countries converged with natives slowly or not at all, thereby maintaining existing gaps between immigrants and natives for at least a generation.…”

Immigration, Occupation, and Inequality in Emergent Nineteenth-Century New England Cities

“…There are many excellent studies of individual wealth accumulation and economic mobility of migrants during this period, including extant and emerging urban centers (e.g., Thernstrom 1973, Herscovici 1998, Ferrie 2005, Salisbury 2014, Conley and Galenson 1998, and DiMatteo 1997, and DiMatteo 2001) and analyses of broad scale immigrant assimilation (e.g. Abramitzky et al 2014). However, our focus on immigrant communities is not to track the fates of individual immigrants but that of emerging immigrant communities within the newly created urban centers.…”