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Title: Determinants and Persistence of Immigrant Ranking Across Occupational Groups in the US

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: The 1940 US Census indicates that immigrants from Canada and Northern Europe were more frequently employed in more prestigious occupations than their counterparts from Asia, South America and Southern and Eastern Europe. While many Canadians and Northern Europeans found employment in white-collar jobs, most other immigrants were employed in blue-collar jobs. Using data from US Census, we study immigrants allocation to occupations across time and space and the resulting ranking of immigrant groups based on Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI). We find that, within metropolitan areas, there is little overlap between popular occupations across immigrants from different countries. Moreover, we find a substantial variability in popular occupations across metropolitan areas for most of the groups. Using rank ordered logit model, we find that initial occupational choices still matter for the observed ranking. We also show that, under some conditions, improving the initial SEI score of a group that is ranked last, results in changes in observed ranking.

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Authors: Postepska, Agnieszka; Vella, Francis

Publisher: IZA Working Papers

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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