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Income, Cohort Effects, and Occupational Mobility: A New Look at Immigration to the United States at the Turn of the 20th Century

https://doi.org/10.1006/exeh.2000.0746Get rights and content

Abstract

How did turn-of-the-20th-century immigrants perform in the American economy relative to native-born Americans? This article reassesses this question using data from the 1900 and 1910 American census files. I find in both cross sections that American immigrants perform well in blue-collar and white-collar occupations, with either faster growth in earnings or an outright earnings advantage over native-born Americans in the same occupational sector. Estimates of within-cohort growth reveal that the cross-sectional results do not overstate immigrant progress due to cohort effects. Immigrants also exhibit a high degree of mobility into the well-paid white-collar sector of the American economy, and the progress of the immigrant population as a whole was not slowed by the emergence of the “new” immigration.

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    1

    Special thanks to Tim Hatton and Roy Bailey for valuable advice and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. I have also received useful comments from Ken Burdett and seminar participants at the University of Essex; the University of Cambridge; the 1999 Economic History Society Annual Conference at St. Catherine's College, Oxford; and the 1999 Canadian Economic History Meetings at Kananaskis, Alberta. I also thank two anonymous referees and the editor of this journal. Any remaining errors are mine.

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