Did the Americanization Movement Succeed? An Evaluation of the Effect of English-Only and Compulsory Schools Laws on Immigrants' Education

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, education legislation was often passed based on arguments that new laws were needed to force immigrants to learn English and "Americanize." We provide the first estimates of the effect of statutes requiring English as the language of instruction and compulsory schooling laws on the school enrollment, work, literacy and English fluency of immigrant children from 1910 to 1930. English schooling statutes did increase the literacy of foreign-born children, though only modestly. Compulsory schooling and continuation school laws raised immigrants' enrollment and the effects were much larger for children born abroad than for native-born children.

Immigration in American Economic History

“…Some states passed laws in the 1910s and 1920s requiring that public school classes be taught in English only. 55 Lleras-Muney and Shertzer (2015) find that this language policy had modest effects on the literacy of children of non-English speaking parents. 56 …”

Immigrant group size and political mobilization: Evidence from European migration to the United States

“…My findings contribute to the literature on the social and economic assimilation process of immigrants to the United States. Economists have investigated many aspects of immigrant assimilation and convergence, particularly earnings and education (Chiswick, 1978;Borjas, 1985;LaLonde and Topel, 1991;Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson, 2012;Card, 2005;Lleras-Muney and Shertzer, 2014). This paper studies the political dimension of immigrant assimilation, which previously received much less attention in economics.…”

The Economic Payoff of Name Americanization

“…In fact, before the 1924 restrictions -but also after the imposition of quotas -direct benefits for citizenship were rather limited per se. Immigrants during this time were permanent residents and, before the New Deal, social benefits were too small to reflect a motivation for naturalization (Lleras-Muney and Shertzer, 2012). had a standardized format prescribed by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, forming the rich records that we have digitalized as part of our research.…”