Age at Arrival and Assimilation During the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

We estimate the effect of age at arrival for immigrant outcomes with a new dataset of arrivals linked to the 1940 U.S. Census. Using within-family variation, we find that arriving at an older age, or having more childhood exposure to the European environment, led to a more negative wage gap relative to the native born. Infant arrivals had a positive wage gap relative to natives, in contrast to a negative gap for teenage arrivals. Therefore, a key determinant of immigrant outcomes during the Age of Mass Migration was the country of residence during critical periods of childhood development.

The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

“…The low match rate is expected due to the high return migration rates, enumeration and transcription errors across multiple sources, age heaping and a host of other issues using historical data (Abramitzky et al 2019). However, these match rates are comparable to prior research that has linked passenger records to censuses in the US and abroad using similar matching techniques (see Alexander and Ward 2018;Spitzer and Zimran 2017;Pérez 2017). The second link generates a final sample size of 53,296 individuals where I successfully match 46 percent of second-generation sons.…”

“…Borjas uses a pseudo-cohort analysis to show that average group-level socioeconomic differences measured in the 1910 census persist through 1980, albeit in attenuated form, and differences are believed to persist through the fifth generation. Methodological critiques against this particular research have been widespread, however, ranging from arguments on what groups should be included (Alba, Lutz, and Vesselinov 2001;but see Borjas 2001) to the fact that Borjas includes both temporary and permanent migrants to measure socioeconomic backgrounds of groups (Ward 2018). These methodological decisions have important consequences for the results Borjas produced, but more recent research that overcomes these critiques supports the claim that socioeconomic status immigrants come with influences the trajectories of immigrants and their descendants for a long time.…”

“…A challenge of matching passenger records to census records is that name changes could have occurred at Ellis Island. Some researchers who have matched passenger records to censuses have allowed for name Americanization to account for this issue (Spitzer and Zimran 2017;Alexander and Ward 2018). While match rates are slightly higher for these algorithms, dramatically morphing names like these methods do could lead to potential false matches.…”

“…Much of this research, however, has relied on synthetic-cohort analyses since there are few datasets that link immigrant parents to their offspring. However, with the development of panel datasets using full-count censuses and other historical sources, there has been a resurgence of research seeking to understand how long socioeconomic differences persist (Abramitzky et al 2014;Connor 2018b;Ward 2018). This study enters this debate by investigating how long differences in premigration socioeconomic status lasted within and across immigrant groups who entered at the turn of the twentieth century.Specifically, this article develops a new dataset that tracks within-family intergenerational mobility across multiple time-points measured both in the sending country and through settlement.…”

The Economic Assimilation of Irish Famine Migrants to the United States

“…The last set, labeled "Controls plus nativity," are the estimates obtained with all the controls mentioned above and an indicator for US birth. 42 US birth might be advantageous to later life outcomes, as it implies no exposure to a long trans-Atlantic voyage and full exposure to American educational institutions, language, and society (Hatton 1997;Alexander and Ward 2018).…”