A Historical Note on the Assimilation Rates of Foreign-Born Men and Women in the U.S

Harriet Duleep (), Daniel J. Dowhan (), Xingfei Liu (), Mark Regets () and Robert Gesumaria ()
Additional contact information
Harriet Duleep: College of William and Mary
Daniel J. Dowhan: U.S. Office of Research
Xingfei Liu: University of Alberta
Mark Regets: National Foundation for American Policy
Robert Gesumaria: U.S. Office of Research

No 17831, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Fueling debates about the “quality” of immigrants from economically developing countries, empirical studies based on a well-respected methodology conclude that post-1965 immigrant men have low initial earnings and sluggish earnings growth. This methodology is based on flawed assumptions (Duleep, Liu, and Regets, 2022). Removing these assumptions reveals high earnings growth for post-1965 immigrant men in accordance with the Immigrant Human Capital Investment Model (Duleep and Regets, 1999). A similar story emerges for immigrant women, contradicting the Family Investment Hypothesis first put forth by Long (1980) and Duleep and Sanders (1993). It appears a pre-1965/post-1965 transition occurred in the earnings profiles of U.S. immigrants, from earnings resembling those of U.S. natives to low initial earnings but much higher earnings growth than their U.S.-born statistical twins. The transition underlies the overtime success story of immigrant families from economically developing countries (Duleep, Regets, Sanders, and Wunnava, 2021); the high earnings growth reflects human capital investment that invigorates the economy (Duleep, Jaeger, and McHenry, 2018; Green, 1999, Green and Worswick, 2012).

Keywords: human capital investment; skill transferability; immigrant quality; sample restrictions; family investment hypothesis; immigrant earning growth; nonparametric estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 J15 J16 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
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Forthcoming - forthcoming in: Research in Labor Economics.

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