U.S. Occupational Mobility of Children of Immigrants Based on Parents' Origin-Country Occupation

Abstract

This study provides a national-level assessment of occupational mobility and early-career attainment of children of immigrants based on parents' origin-country occupation. Exploiting unique aspects of the Educational Longitudinal Study, we examine how parent-child U.S. intergenerational occupational mobility patterns and child occupational attainment differ based on parental premigration occupational status (i.e., low- vs. high-skilled) and parental postmigration occupational mobility (i.e., upward, same, or downward). Our results suggest misestimation in intergenerational mobility research if parents' origin-country occupation is excluded. Including parents' origin-country occupation, we find that the children of immigrants are recovering from instances of parental occupational downgrading, building on parental advances, and advancing where parents could not. Furthermore, most children of immigrants do as well or better occupationally than children of non-Hispanic White natives. Strong educational investments help explain this advantage, particularly for children of high-skilled immigrants. However, results indicate that all children of immigrants would attain even more if they faced fewer postmigration barriers, especially children of low-skilled immigrants. These results advance immigrant selection and assimilation theories by demonstrating how pre- and postmigration factors influence occupational attainment of children of immigrants.

Open-Population Inference: An Investigation of the Underrepresentation of the Second Generation in Research on Intergenerational Income Mobility

“…The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort (NLSY97) targets birth cohorts 1980-1984, but unequal attrition and nonresponse lead it to somewhat underrepresent 1.5-and second-generation persons in the samples likely to be used in income mobility analyses (see Online Appendix and Table A1). These results provide novel empirical support for the arguments made above and show that intergenerational income mobility research in the 8 Studies of intergenerational educational and occupational mobility among people from immigrant families are much more common than studies of intergenerational income mobility (e.g., Liu and Xie 2016;Feliciano and Lanuza 2017;Catron 2020;Potochnick and Hall 2021) because the former do not require data collected prospectively across decades, unlike the latter (Torche 2015a). A single year of data from each generation is generally considered sufficient to measure educational and occupational mobility, whereas income mobility studies require multiple years of data from both the parent and offspring generations (Solon 1999).…”

“…Further, 1.5- and second-generation parental income data may provide worse proxies for parental socioeconomic status than third-and-higher-generation parental income data because immigrant parents often take jobs that require fewer skills post-migration than their pre-migration jobs and face elevated risks of wage theft and precarious employment (Galemba and Kuhn 2021; Potochnick and Hall 2021). However, it is not optimal to consider income as a proxy for other socioeconomic characteristics because income, occupation, and education are less highly correlated than many people intuit (Bloome, Schrage, and Furey 2021).…”

“… 8 Studies of intergenerational educational and occupational mobility among people from immigrant families are much more common than studies of intergenerational income mobility (e.g., Liu and Xie 2016; Feliciano and Lanuza 2017; Catron 2020; Potochnick and Hall 2021) because the former do not require data collected prospectively across decades, unlike the latter (Torche 2015a). A single year of data from each generation is generally considered sufficient to measure educational and occupational mobility, whereas income mobility studies require multiple years of data from both the parent and offspring generations (Solon 1999).…”

Contextual Boundaries: Skin Tone Stratification and Skill Transferability Among Mexicans in the Age of Mass Migration

“…Dominant explanations of within-group economic differences focus on the role that capital plays in immigrants' socioeconomic attainment (Feliciano and Lanuza 2017;Ichou 2014;Portes and Rumbaut 2001;Potochnick and Hall 2021). Individuals with greater levels of capital are often observed to perform better in the labor market than individuals with lower levels.…”

Three essays on assimilation and acculturation of international instructors at U.S. research universities

“…Akresh (2006) finds that fifty percent of first-generation immigrants to the United States take up jobs of lower hierarchies than their jobs before they migrated. Potochnick and Hall (2021) further this observation, finding that children of immigrants show upward trends in occupational mobility despite their parents' downward experience. High-skilled immigrants broadly-mainly those who work in science, engineering and technology industries with H1-B visas-differ from their native counterparts across important occupational dimensions, regarding expertise, job choice, English fluency, and income Hunt, 2015;.…”