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Title: Socioeconomic Attainment in the Ellis Island Era

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This project addresses a gap in the assimilation literature. Contemporary immigrant assimilation theory compares todays immigrants to Southern and Eastern European immigrants from the great wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the Ellis Island era), yet the latter groups socioeconomic assimilation has not been tested empirically with longitudinal data. Using several decades of IPUMS census data, we utilize both double cohort methodology and OLS microdata regression to test the Ellis Island myth that those who arrived during the Ellis Island era managed rather quickly to climb the socioeconomic ladder. Our results show that while the first generation (the foreign born) exhibit decidedly inferior labor market outcomes, socioeconomic attainment (measured as SEI points) increases quickly with duration in the US.Persons of the second generation and those of mixed parentage show much less penalty than immigrants. We uncover differences in outcome by European region that do not disappear over the decades we examine.

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Authors: Mullen, Erica Jade; White, Michael J.

Conference Name: Population Association of America

Publisher Location: San Francisco, CA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Migration and Immigration

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