Working Their Way Up? US Immigrants' Changing Labor Market Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration

William Collins and Ariell Zimran

No 26414, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Whether immigrants advance in labor markets during their lifetime relative to natives is a fundamental question in the economics of immigration. We examine linked census records for five cohorts, spanning 1850-1940, when immigration to the United States was at its peak. We find a U-shaped pattern of assimilation: immigrants were “catching up” to natives in the early and later cohorts, but not in between. This change was not due to shifts in immigrants’ source countries. Instead, it was rooted in men’s early-career occupations, which we associate with structural change, strengthening complementarities, and large immigration waves in the 1840s and 1900s.

JEL-codes: J61 J62 N11 N12 N13 N14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-int, nep-lab and nep-mig
Note: DAE DEV LS POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as William J. Collins & Ariell Zimran, 2023. "Working Their Way Up? US Immigrants’ Changing Labor Market Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol 15(3), pages 238-269.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26414.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:26414

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26414

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 ().