Long live the American dream: Self-selection and inequality-persistence among American immigrants

Joakim Ruist

No 1714, RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM)

Abstract: This paper aims to explain the slow economic convergence between groups of different ancestries in the US, i.e. why these groups experience even less intergenerational mobility than individuals in the same country. It shows how excessively persistent inequality may be a long-lasting outcome of ancestors’ self-selection into migration, and need not involve e.g. ethnicity-based behaviors. A testable implication is that the correlation between home country characteristics that influence self- election, and migrants’ and their descendants’ outcomes should increase generation by generation. Verifying this, their ancestors’ migration distance has risen to explain around half the inequality between fourth-generation immigrant groups today.

Keywords: migration; selection; intergenerational mobility; ancestry; immigrant integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I24 J61 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:1714

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