The Not-So-Hot Melting Pot: The Persistence of Outcomes for Descendants of the Age of Mass Migration

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ward, Zachary
• 署名单位: Baylor University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20170382
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 73-102
• 关键词: intergenerational occupational-mobility; ethnic skill differentials; long-run convergence; UNITED-STATES; economic outcomes; income mobility; self-selection; great-britain; neighborhoods; assimilation

摘要

How persistent are economic gaps across ethnicities? The convergence of ethnic gaps through the third generation of immigrants is difficult to measure because few datasets include grandparental birthplace. I overcome this limitation with a new three-generational dataset that links immigrant grandfathers in 1880 to their grandsons in 1940. I find that the persistence of ethnic gaps in occupational income is 2.5 times stronger than predicted by a standard grandfather-grandson elasticity. While part of the discrepancy is due to measurement error attenuating the grandfather-grandson elasticity, mechanisms related to geography also partially explain the stronger persistence of ethnic occupational differentials.