Please call me John: name choice and the assimilation of immigrants in the United States, 1900-1930

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in June 2015Abstract The vast majority of immigrants to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century adopted first names that were common among natives. The rate of adoption of an American name increases with time in the US, although most immigrants adopt an American name within the first year of arrival. Choice of an American first name was associated with a more successful assimilation, as measured by job occupation scores, marriage to a US native and take-up of US citizenship. We examine economic determinants of name choice, by studying the relationship between changes in the proportion of immigrants with an American first name and changes in the concentration of immigrants as well as changes in local labor market conditions, across different census years. We find that high concentrations of immigrants of a given nationality in a particular location discouraged members of that nationality from taking American names. Poor local labor market conditions for immigrants (and good local labor market conditions for natives) led to more frequent name changes among immigrants.

Integration of Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants in Brazil

“…Consequently, more educated Venezuelans and Venezuelans with higher number of children are more likely to register in the unified registry 7 than their Brazilian counterparts. Overall, integration seems to be higher where the population of Venezuelan migrants and refugees is lower, controlling for selection, especially in education, supporting previous literature by Lazaer (1999) and Carneiro et al (2020). It should be noted here that theoretically a larger network of refugees and migrants can provide more information about job prospects, school requirements, social protection benefits and local customs and traditions, promoting integration (Gautier, 2020), but in the case of Brazil, concentration in certain localities like Roraima and most Venezuelan migrants and asylums being new to the situation, seem to be creating an overcrowding e↵ect constraining integration.…”

“…15 Integration is measured as a ratio between the outcome variable of Venezuelans and the outcome of Brazilians. Most commonly used measure, used by Abramitzky et al (2020), Carneiro et al (2020), OECD (2015) and many others, is the relative probability of the outcome variable of Venezuelans compared to Brazilians. To measure integration in the education sector, this paper calculates the relative probability of Venezuelans, aged between 4 and 17 years old, the mandatory school age, 16 enrolled in regular school compared to the Brazilian cohort.…”

“…A R i of 0.5 means that Venezuelans are half as likely as Brazilian to be found in sector i. Abramitzky et al (2020), Carneiro et al (2020) and Fryer and Levitt (2004) point out that the relative probability index is sensitive to outliers and advocates the use of F-Index , which is a monotonic transformation of the relative probability index. The F Index is measured by the following expression:…”

Cultural Assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration

“…We find that this relationship disappears when comparing brothers within the same family. Other work documents a positive economic return for immigrants who change their own first or last name (Arai and Thoursie, 2009;Biavaschi, Giulietti and Siddique, 2013;Carneiro, Lee and Reis, 2015); negative effects of having a distinctively African-American name in the labor market or the classroom (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004;Figlio, 2005); and lower earnings for individuals with identifiably ethnic surnames (Oreopoulos, 2011;Rubinstein and Brenner, 2014). Fryer and Levitt (2004) instead show that black names are not associated with adult outcomes after controlling for family background.…”

Southern (American) Hospitality: Italians in Argentina and the United States During the Age of Mass Migration

“…The linking is based on country of birth, first and last name, and reported age. A challenge in linking these data is that some Italians declared their original name (in Italian) upon arrival but later adopted a Spanish/English version of it (see Biavaschi et al (2017) and Carneiro et al (2017) for these names changes in the context of the US). For instance, the Giuseppes were likely to become Josés in Argentina and Josephs in the US.…”