Gender and Assimilation Among Mexican Americans

Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn

No 11512, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using 1994-2003 CPS data, we study gender and assimilation of Mexican Americans. Source country patterns, particularly the more traditional gender division of labor in the family in Mexico, strongly influence the outcomes and behavior of Mexican immigrants. On arrival in the United States, immigrant women have a higher incidence of marriage (spouse present), higher fertility, and much lower labor supply than comparable white natives; wage differences are smaller than labor supply differences, and smaller than comparable wage gaps for men. Immigrant women's labor supply assimilates dramatically: the ceteris paribus immigrant shortfall is virtually eliminated after twenty years. While men experience moderate wage assimilation, evidence is mixed for women. Rising education in the second generation considerably reduces raw labor supply (especially for women) and wage gaps with nonhispanic whites. Female immigrants' high marriage rates assimilate towards comparable natives', but immigrant women and men remain more likely to be married even after long residence. The remaining ceteris paribus marriage gap is eliminated in the second generation. Immigrants' higher fertility does not assimilate toward the native level, and, while the size of the Mexican American- white native fertility differential declines across generations, it is not eliminated.

JEL-codes: J1 J2 J3 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
Note: CH ED LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published as Gender and Assimilation among Mexican Americans , Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn. in Mexican Immigration to the United States , Borjas. 2007

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11512.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Gender and Assimilation among Mexican Americans (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:nbr:nberwo:11512

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11512

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().