The Ethnic Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940

Abstract

for helpful comments. We thank those at the University of Minnesota Population Center and Ancestry.com for access to historical census files. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Ethnic enclaves and immigrant outcomes: Norwegian immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration

“…Therefore, Figure 3 plots enclave size over time for four sending countries: Norway, Italy, England, and Ireland. England is the longest-standing immigrant group, and, interestingly, These patterns are similar but not identical to the patterns of segregation over time for these countries found in Eriksson and Ward (2018). Using the method of Logan and Parman (2017), that paper traces segregation patterns over the same period by country of origin.…”

The Not-So-Hot Melting Pot: The Persistence of Outcomes for Descendants of the Age of Mass Migration

“…After 60 years, the grandchildren of Irish and German immigrants still lived in the same areas of the country. While this is a straightforward result of children living in the same location as their parents, it also shows that spatial assimilation, or the even spread of ethnicities across the country, did not take place (Eriksson and Ward 2018). The lack of geographic mobility across generations could imply little income convergence given the large per capita income gaps across regions between 1880 and 1940 (Mitchener and McLean 1999).…”

From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration

“…That the direction of the OLS bias is not the same for social and economic assimilation is not entirely surprising -blacks were most likely attracted by economically booming MSAs, in which immigrants were able to experience occupational upgrading. At the same time, it was those same MSAs that attracted more new migrants and potentially saw the formation of migrant enclaves (Eriksson and Ward, 2018), factors that could have hindered the social integration of immigrants.…”