El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II

Edward Kosack and Zachary Ward

The Journal of Economic History, 2020, vol. 80, issue 4, 961-995

Abstract: We present new estimates of the outcomes of first-generation Mexicans and their descendants between 1880 and 1940. We find zero convergence of the economic gap between Mexicans and non-Mexican whites across three generations. The great-grandchildren of immigrants also had fewer years of education. Slow convergence is not simply due to an inheritance of poverty; rather, Mexican Americans had worse outcomes conditional on the father’s economic status. However, the gap between third-generation Mexican Americans and non-Mexican whites is about half the size today as it was in 1940, suggesting that barriers to Mexican American progress have significantly decreased over time.

Date: 2020
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