TY  - JOUR
AU  - Abramitzky,Ran
AU  - Boustan,Leah Platt
AU  - Eriksson,Katherine
TI  - A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18011
PY  - 2012
Y2  - April 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18011
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18011.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ran Abramitzky
Department of Economics
Stanford University
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/723-9276
Fax: 650/725-5702
E-Mail: ranabr@stanford.edu

Leah Platt Boustan
Department of Economics
8283 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477
Tel: 310/794-4263
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: lboustan@econ.ucla.edu

Katherine Eriksson
Department of Economics
8283 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477
E-Mail: kath722@ucla.edu
AB  - During the Age of Mass Migration, the US maintained open borders and absorbed 30 million European immigrants. Using cross-sectional data, prior work on this era finds that immigrants held lower-paid occupations than natives upon first arrival but experienced rapid convergence. In newly-assembled panel data following immigrants over time, the initial immigrant earnings penalty disappears almost entirely, and immigrants experience occupational upgrading at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by declines over time in arrival cohort quality and the departure of negatively-selected return migrants. We show that these findings vary substantially across sending countries and explore potential mechanisms.
ER  -