Feminized Intergenerational Mobility Without Assimilation? Post-1965 U.S. Immigrants and the Gender Revolution

Abstract

Women in the United States have made significant socioeconomic advances over the last generation. The second generation of post-1965 immigrants came of age during this "gender revolution." However, assimilation theories focus mainly on racial/ethnic trajectories. Do gendered trajectories between and within groups better capture mobility patterns? Using the 1980 decennial census and the 2003-2007 Current Population Survey (CPS), we observe the socioeconomic status of Latino and Asian immigrant parents and their second-generation children 25 years later. We compare the educational, occupational, and earnings attainment of second-generation daughters and sons with that of their immigrant mothers and fathers. We simultaneously compare those socioeconomic trajectories with a U.S.-born white, non-Latino reference group. We find that second-generation women experience greater status attainment than both their mothers and their male counterparts, but the earnings of second-generation women lag behind those of men. However, because white mainstream women experienced similar intergenerational mobility, many gaps between the second generation and the mainstream remain. These patterns remain even after we control for parenthood status. With feminized intergenerational mobility occurring similarly across race, the racial/ethnic gaps observed in 1980 narrow but persist into the next generation for many outcomes. Both gender and race shape mobility trajectories, so ignoring either leads to an incomplete picture of assimilation.

The New Third Generation: Post‐1965 Immigration and the Next Chapter in the Long Story of Assimilation

“…The overwhelming focus of assimilation research is on how ethnoracial origin and generation structure assimilation outcomes. But previous research on the second generation highlights how gender significantly shapes assimilation outcomes (Park and Myers 2010; Park, Nawyn, and Benetsky 2015). A pressing question for the next generation of assimilation research is whether and how gender continues to shape socioeconomic outcomes as part of the assimilation process.…”

“…Beyond socioeconomic indicators of assimilation, which are well documented with this methodology (Park and Myers 2010; Park, Myers, and Jiménez 2014; Park, Nawyn, and Benetsky 2015), the coresidence of the young third generation with their second‐generation parents provides an ideal opportunity to examine marriage and household structure as forms of assimilation of Hispanics and Asians. Therefore, we look at the presence of extended family members coresiding with third‐generation children in 2010 and compare them to the shares for the second‐generation children a generation earlier (in 1980).…”

Insider Out: Cross-National Differences in Foreign-Born Female Labor Force Participation in the United States, Sweden, and Japan

“…Among complementary findings, two trends stand out. First, foreign-born women are less likely to participate in the labor force than native-born women in many post-industrial societies (Park and Myers 2010; Donato, Piya, and Jacobs 2014; Park, Nawyn, and Benetsky 2015), and this finding holds true across most age cohorts and household types. Second, foreign-born women in the labor force are more heavily concentrated in low-skilled occupations, compared with native-born women with similar demographic profiles (Schoeni 1998; Duvander 2001; Read and Cohen 2007).…”

Toward a new understanding of immigrant information behavior

“…Migration literature supports that Black male immigrants face acute social and acculturative demands upon relocation to the United States. Some studies suggest that Black male immigrants confront greater discrimination and socioeconomic challenges in comparison to their female counterparts (Doamekpor and Dinwiddie, 2015;Park et al, 2015). Information overload might contribute to the unique limitations that Black male immigrants face as they acculturate to US society.…”