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Title: "The Best Country in the World": The Surprising Social Mobility of New York's Irish Famine Immigrants
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: We use databases we have created from the records of New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank, founded by pre-Famine Irish immigrants and their children to serve Famine era immigrants, to study the social mobility of bank customers and, by extension, Irish immigrants more generally. We infer that New York’s Famine Irish had a greater range of employment opportunities open to them than perhaps commonly acknowledged, and that the majority were eventually able to move a rung or two up the American socioeconomic ladder, supporting the conviction of many Famine immigrants that the U.S. was indeed “the best country in the world.”
Url: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/246494
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Anbinder, Tyler; O Grada, Cormac; Wegge, Simone
Series Title: UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series
Publication Number: WP21/21
Institution: UCD Centre for Economic Research
Pages: 1-41
Publisher Location: Dublin
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography
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