Immigrants Assimilate as Communities, Not Just as Individuals

Timothy J. Hatton () and Andrew Leigh
Additional contact information
Timothy J. Hatton: University of Essex

No 2538, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There is a large econometric literature that examines the economic assimilation of immigrants in the United States and elsewhere. On the whole immigrants are seen as atomistic individuals assimilating in a largely anonymous labour market, a view that runs counter to the spirit of the equally large literature on ethnic groups. Here we argue that immigrants assimilate as communities, not just as individuals. The longer the immigrant community has been established the better adjusted it is to the host society and the more the host society comes to accept that ethnic group. Thus economic outcomes for immigrants should depend not just on their own characteristics, but also on the legacy of past immigration from the same country. In this paper we test this hypothesis using data from a 5 percent sample of the 1980, 1990 and 2000 US censuses. We find that history matters in immigrant assimilation: the stronger is the tradition of immigration from a given source country, the better the economic outcomes for new immigrants from that source.

Keywords: assimilation; US labor market; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F2 J3 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2007-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2011, 24 (2), 389-419

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2538.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Immigrants assimilate as communities, not just as individuals (2011)
Working Paper: Immigrants Assimilate as Communities, not just as Individuals (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2538

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().