The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

A long-standing debate is concerned over how long premigration socioeconomic differences persisted for immigrants and their descendants who entered at the turn-of-thetwentieth century. Some researchers argue that differences exist today, over 100 years after first arrival, while others argue that most differences disappeared after the third generation. However, none of this research has directly measured pre-migration socioeconomic status nor has it directly linked immigrants to their children. I create a new panel dataset that follows immigrants and their children from the sending country through settlement. Specifically, I link ship manifest records to census records to track how long premigration socioeconomic differences persist across generations. Passenger records provide a wealth of information of individuals including the occupation before arrival. I analyze how long premigration differences persist within and between groups. Whereas premigration socioeconomic status is associated with the first generation's economic outcomes after settlement, many of these differences disappear by the second generation. These results suggest that background is not destiny for immigrant descendants. As scholars and politicians debate about whether countries should admit primarily high-skilled or low-skilled immigrants, the results from this article tell us whether such selection policies are necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in a period of open borders.Acknowledgements: Dylan Connor, Leah Boustan, Zach Ward, and participants at McGill's Centre on Population Dynamics speaker series provided useful comments on this article. All mistakes are my own.From its inception to the mid-1920s, the United States had an open immigration policy with a few ethno-racial exceptions. Millions of immigrants entered the US and were subsequently absorbed into the labor market. A long-standing debate is concerned over how long initial differences in socioeconomic status persisted for these immigrant groups (Waters 1990; Waters and Lieberson 1989;Alba et al. 2001;Borjas 1994Borjas , 2001. Whereas some researchers argue that the United States is a melting-pot, quickly dissolving background differences, others argue that there was strong socioeconomic persistence for groups leading to long-term differences that lasted for over 100 years. Much of this research, however, has relied on synthetic-cohort analyses since there are few datasets that link immigrant parents to their offspring. However, with the development of panel datasets using full-count censuses and other historical sources, there has been a resurgence of research seeking to understand how long socioeconomic differences persist (Abramitzky et al. 2014;Connor 2018b;Ward 2018). This study enters this debate by investigating how long differences in premigration socioeconomic status lasted within and across immigrant groups who entered at the turn of the twentieth century.Specifically, this article develops a new dataset that tracks within-family intergenerational mobility ...

The Economic Attainment of Mexican Refugees during the Age of Mass Migration

“…Since its inception, the United States has kept detailed records of individuals stepping foot onto U.S. soil. However, most laws that governed what information was recorded corresponded to those arriving via ships from Europe since 1813 (Catron 2020).…”

“…Women often change their names at marriage making it impossible to follow across records. 5 We use a linking procedure that follows standard algorithms that match individuals using their name, age, and place of birth (Abramitzky et al 2019;Catron 2019Catron , 2020. This technique links individuals from their border crossing record to their 1920 or 1930 census record by first 5 Mexicans do not fully follow naming practices that make matching women impossible as they do for other groups.…”

“…This article, therefore, is about Mexican immigrants who settled in the U.S. long-term. 7 Variables used to weight the results include age, birth state, marital status, premigration occupation, literacy, and prior trips to the U.S. 8 Most studies on the economic incorporation of historical immigrants tend to use occupational income scores as their dependent variable (Catron 2019(Catron , 2020Connor 2020). This variable assigns the median income of each detailed occupation in the 1950 census that is then applied to with an 8 or 9 (omitting non-occupational responses; occ1950>=980) and skilled workers as having occupational codes not defined as an unskilled position.…”

Re-Emerging Inequality: Narrow Economic Gaps between Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Offspring Widen Over the Life Course

“…Over time and across generations, immigrants tend to close economic gaps with nonimmigrants, both in recent and historical cohorts (Abramitzky, Boustan, Jácome, et al, 2019;R. Alba, Kasinitz, and Waters, 2011;Catron, 2020), though with some variations across groups and over generations (Telles and Ortiz, 2008;Ward, 2020). Some approaches to immigrant's socioeconomic mobility suggest immigrants are better positioned to improve upon their parents' position across generations than non-immigrants, as immigrant parents' earnings in the host country might not reflect their human capital.…”

“…Research on immigrants' economic mobility recognizes the importance of life course dynamics in the first generation, for whom an initial gap in earnings with non-immigrants is predicted to close with time spent in the host country (e.g. Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson, 2014;Catron, 2016;Chiswick and Miller, 2009;Han, 2020;Lubotsky, 2007;Villarreal and Tamborini, 2018) but rarely considers changes over the life course in the second generation. Usually, researchers assume the point at which income is observed in the cross-section reflects individuals' "permanent income."…”