A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract

During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), the United States maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but converged over time. In newly assembled panel data, we show that, in fact, the average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival and experienced occupational advancement at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by biases from declining arrival cohort skill level and departures of negatively selected return migrants. We show that assimilation patterns vary substantially across sending countries and persist in the second generation.

Fig. 1

—Occupational distribution of natives and immigrants in cross section and panel in 1900. A, Cross section, immigrants and natives. B, Panel, immigrants and natives. C, Cross section, immigrants in early and late arrival cohorts. D, Panel, immigrants in early and late arrival cohorts.

Fig. 1

—Occupational distribution of natives and immigrants in cross section and panel in 1900. A, Cross section, immigrants and natives. B, Panel, immigrants and natives. C, Cross section, immigrants in early and late arrival cohorts. D, Panel, immigrants in early and late arrival cohorts.

Fig. 2

—Convergence in occupation score between immigrants and native-born workers by time spent in the United States, cross-sectional and panel data, 1900–1920. The graph plots coefficients for years spent in the United States indicators in equation (1). Note that for the panel line, we subtract the native-born dummy from the years in the United States indicators (because the omitted category in that regression is natives in the panel sample). See table 4 for coefficients and standard errors.

Fig. 3

—Earnings gap between the native- and foreign-born in the panel sample: natives versus immigrants upon first arrival (0–5 years in the United States) and after time in the United States (30+ years in the United States), by country of origin. The graph reports co-efficients on the interaction between country-of-origin fixed effects and dummy variables for being in the United States for 0–5 years or for 30+ years from regression of equation (1) in the panel sample. All coefficients for the 0–5 year interaction are significant except those for Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden. None of the differences between the 0–5 year and 30+ year coefficients are significant except for those of Finland and Ireland.

Fig. 4

—Changing quality of arrival cohorts, difference between immigrant penalty for early and late arrivals in the panel sample, by country of origin. Estimates are based on the version of equation (1) that contains country fixed effects and dummy variables for four arrival cohorts (see table 7, panel B). In addition, we interact the country fixed effects with the dummy variables for arrival cohort. The graph reports the difference between the dummy variable for arriving in the United States between 1880 and 1885 and the dummy variable for arriving in the United States between 1895 and 1900, separately by country. Differences that are significantly different from zero are in black. The sample includes observations in the panel sample.

Fig. 5

—Implied selection of return migrants, difference between estimated convergence in panel and repeated cross-section data, by country of origin. The figure reports the difference between immigrants’ occupational upgrading relative to natives (defined as the difference between occupation-based earnings after 21–30 years and after 0–5 years) in the panel sample versus the cross section, by sending country. Results are from a regression of equation (1) that pools the panel and cross-section samples. Coefficients that are significantly different from zero are in black.

Fig. 6

—Convergence in occupation-based earnings across immigrant generations: first-generation and second-generation migrants versus natives, by country of origin. We estimate the regression in equation (2) separately for each group and for each country: immigrants (first generation), US natives in the same censuses and ages as the immigrants, sons of immigrants (second generation), and US natives in the same censuses and ages as the second-generation sample. The bars for the first generation represent the difference in the predicted occupation-based earnings of an immigrant who came in 1890 and is 35 years old in 1910 relative to a 35-year-old native. The bars for the second generation represent the difference in the predicted occupation-based earnings of a man born in the United States to immigrant parents relative to a man born in the United States to native parents, both of whom were 35 years old in 1930. First-generation immigrants are taken from the panel sample. Natives and second-generation immigrants come from IPUMS data in the respective census year.