A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration

Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan and Katherine Eriksson ()

No 18011, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), the US maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work on this era finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but experienced rapid convergence over time. In newly-assembled panel data, we show that, in fact, the average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival and experienced occupational advancement at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by biases from declining arrival cohort quality and departures of negatively-selected return migrants. We show that assimilation patterns vary substantially across sending countries and persist in the second generation.

JEL-codes: F22 J61 N31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-lab and nep-mig
Note: DAE LS
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published as “A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration,” with Leah Boustan and Katherine Eriksson, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 122, Number 3, June 2014

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