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Title: Immigrant Homeownership, Economic Assimilation, and Return Migration During the Age of Mass Migration to the United States
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2012
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Abstract: This report investigates the state of knowledge about urban non-farm home ownership by the native- and foreign-born population between 1890 and 1930. The hypothesis I entertain is that home ownership was relatively common for all non-farm residents in this era because an owned home was a good life-cycle asset. I also suggest that the life-cycle motive for saving was particularly strong for immigrants who intended to become permanent residents of the U.S. For 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930, I rely on samples drawn from the manuscript enumeration schedules underlying those four U.S. censuses. For 1890 I reproduce data published in the U.S. Census Reports of that year. I find that the incidence of home ownership rose with age for both the foreign- and native-born families in cross-sections drawn from the census samples. Homeownership rates calculated for immigrants were surprisingly high and exceeded those for the native born by a substantial margin when corrected for city size and other coincident variables. I find little reason to be concerned that negative selection among returning migrants distorted the cross-section profiles after excluding those residing in the U.S. for only a few years. Successive cohorts of arriving immigrants do not exhibit a decline in skills. The cross-section profiles of homeownership by age in 1900 accurately predict the ownership trajectory of each birth cohort through 1920. A measure of success in achieving home ownership is the homeownership rate for seniors (say age 55 and above). I find ownership rates at older ages exceeding 45 percent and in smaller urban places reaching 60 percent of the families examined. Ownership was less common in large cities than in smaller urban places.
Url: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/eichengreen/Sutch.pdf
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Authors: Sutch, Richard
Conference Name: Social Science History Association
Publisher Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Migration and Immigration
Countries: United States