Working Their Way Up? US Immigrants’ Changing Labor Market Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration
利用1850-1940年五组移民队列的普查记录，发现移民相对于本地人的经济融入呈现U型模式，早期和后期队列追赶较快，中间队列停滞，原因与结构性变化和移民浪潮有关。
Whether immigrants advance in labor markets during their lifetimes relative to natives is a fundamental question in the economics of immigration. We examine linked census records for five cohorts spanning 1850–1940, when immigration to the United States was at its peak. We find a U-shaped pattern of assimilation: immigrants were “catching up” to natives in the early and later cohorts, but not in between. This change was not due to shifts in immigrants’ source countries. Instead, it was rooted in men’s early-career occupations, which we associate with structural change, strengthening complementarities, and large immigration waves in the 1840s and 1900s.