Do Immigrants Assimilate More Slowly Today than in the Past?

Abstract

Using millions of historical census records and modern birth certificates, we document that immigrants assimilated into US society at similar rates in the past and present. We measure cultural assimilation as immigrants giving their children less foreign names after spending more time in the United States, and show that immigrants erase about one‑half of the naming gap with natives after 20 years both historically and today. Immigrants from poorer coun‑ tries choose more foreign names upon first arrival in both periods but are among the fastest to shift toward native‑sounding names. We find substantial cultural assimilation for immigrants of all education levels. (JEL J15, N31, N32, Z13)

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

“…Second-generational gains are consistent with the positive mobility gap found in Abramitzky et al (2019). A stronger gain for the second generation today is also consistent with a rising return to English fluency, since the second-generation often acquires fluency in youth (Abramitzky et al 2020; Ward 2020a). Beyond the second generation, however, the data suggest that Mexican American progress stalled.…”

“…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).…”

Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States

“…A rich social science literature motivates our names-based measure of individualism. The informational content of names has been emphasized in economics (e.g., Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (2020), Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004)) as well as psychology and sociology (e.g., Gerrit and Onland (2011), Lieberson and Bell (1992)). The measure we use comes from social psychology, a field that portrays individualism as the key dimension of cultural variation across countries (Heine (2010)).…”

“…This specification is similar to that inAbramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson (2020), who relate time spent in the United States to the Americanization of names given to native-born children by foreign-born mothers. Whereas their study estimates separate equations for children born pre-and post-move to the United States, we combine the two in an event-study design centered on the time of move.30 The sample is relatively small because the frontier comprised a small share of the entire U.S. population at any given time in the 1800s, and the restriction to frontier migrants with children born prior to moving further reduces the sample size.…”

PAYG challenge for preferential migration

“…Assimilation literature is still very active without any apparent consensus: Abramitzky et al . (2020) discusses issues of cultural assimilation while Rho and Sanders (2020) present assimilation in the labour market. The current paper takes a neutral stance on the issue and discusses two possible extremes of assimilation, full assimilation and no assimilation, and another illustrative intermediate.…”