Working Paper: NBER ID: w18011
Authors: Ran Abramitzky; Leah Platt Boustan; Katherine Eriksson
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.
Keywords: immigration; assimilation; economic outcomes; labor market; mass migration
JEL Codes: F22; J61; N31
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Initial earnings gaps between immigrants and natives (J69) | Immigrants experience occupational advancement at the same rate as natives (J69) |
| The average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival (K37) | Immigrants did not face a substantial occupational penalty (J69) |
| Apparent convergence in earnings observed in cross-sectional data is driven by biases related to declining arrival cohort quality and the departure of negatively-selected return migrants (J69) | Immigrants experience occupational advancement at the same rate as natives (J69) |
| Long-term immigrants from sending countries with real wages above the European median held higher-paid occupations than US natives upon arrival (J69) | Immigrants did not face a substantial occupational penalty (J69) |
| Initial occupational gaps are preserved over time (J29) | Immigrants experience occupational advancement at the same rate as natives (J69) |