The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (2015) / Chapter Skim
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6 Socioeconomic Dimensions of Immigrant Integration
6 Socioeconomic Dimensions of Immigrant Integration
Pages 247-302
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From page 247... ...
Immigrants from countries such as Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Poland often arrived with no possessions and very little or no education. Through hard work and the opportunities provided by an expanding labor market, they achieved some socioeconomic progress in their own lives and remarkable progress by the second and third generation.
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From page 248... ...
to derive estimates for the second generation of major national origin groups. In addition, the panel could not separate the third generation specifically from all later generations in federal data sources, and we found no information on legal status for the first generation (the foreign-born)
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From page 249... ...
Rising inequality in the labor market and the increasing returns to higher education in recent decades mean that immigrants and especially their children need rapid growth in educational attainment to experience rising incomes over time. While Italians, for instance, took three or four generations to reach educational parity with the general population of native-born whites, there was an abundance of jobs that paid a family wage for men with less than a college degree.
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From page 250... ...
< 12 16+ Sample Size Educ. < 12 16+ Sample Size Mexico 9.4 55.2 5.4 24,371 12.6 15.2 14.9 5,545 Cuba 12.9 13.6 24.7 1,614 14.2 3.5 40.4 599 Dominican Republic 11.8 26.7 15.8 1,303 13.4 7.3 23.3 254 Central America 9.8 48.0 9.5 6,414 13.4 8.1 25.7 665 South America 13.2 12.6 31.6 4,718 14.3 1.7 42.9 803 China 14.7 10.7 58.3 2,409 15.4 3.4 67.8 672 India 16.3 2.7 83.2 3,878 15.9 2.2 76.7 389 Japan 15.6 0.5 72.7 456 14.3 4.5 42.8 529 Korea 15.4 0.9 68.8 1,510 15.0 2.2 60.5 378 Philippines 14.4 2.5 49.1 2,977 14.3 2.2 42.7 1,168 Vietnam 13.0 15.2 30.1 2,062 14.4 4.9 48.9 256 Haiti 12.8 13.9 22.1 844 13.9 2.9 32.9 131 Jamaica 13.0 10.9 20.9 980 14.1 4.3 36.8 203 Africa 14.3 5.3 48.1 3,551 14.7 2.2 50.1 429 Canada 15.0 3.1 57.4 1,419 14.1 4.2 38.8 2,856 Europe 14.4 5.2 47.4 8,177 14.5 2.8 46.1 10,519 All Countries 12.1 28.2 28.4 78,471 13.9 7.1 35.6 29,631 NOTE: The first generation samples include foreign-born men ages 25-59, excluding those born abroad of an American parent.
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From page 251... ...
< 12 16+ Sample Size Educ. < 12 16+ Sample Size Mexico 9.5 53.9 6.5 21,762 12.8 14.6 18.2 6,034 Cuba 13.2 9.5 26.3 1,612 14.5 3.7 46.4 594 Dominican Republic 11.9 27.1 16.8 2,071 14.0 6.6 36.2 297 Central America 10.2 43.0 10.9 6,124 14.0 5.4 36.7 751 South America 13.4 10.2 33.1 5,495 14.5 2.3 45.8 860 China 14.2 11.5 52.6 2,918 15.4 1.9 70.1 689 India 15.8 4.0 78.1 3,445 16.1 2.4 79.8 397 Japan 14.8 0.6 53.4 874 14.7 2.0 47.8 518 Korea 14.5 3.9 53.7 2,267 15.3 2.1 65.3 387 Philippines 14.7 2.9 57.2 4,753 14.6 2.1 49.8 1,244 Vietnam 12.5 19.3 25.9 2,340 14.8 2.5 59.5 250 Haiti 12.6 17.0 21.0 975 14.7 5.8 53.3 158 Jamaica 13.4 10.6 28.4 1,408 14.7 2.1 46.2 274 Africa 13.5 9.9 37.9 3,201 15.0 2.4 58.1 443 Canada 14.8 2.2 51.4 1,707 14.4 3.0 43.4 2,920 Europe 14.4 4.9 47.0 9,316 14.6 2.3 46.3 11,015 All Countries 12.3 24.8 29.8 83,028 14.0 6.4 38.9 31,608 NOTE: The first generation samples include foreign-born women ages 25-59, excluding those born abroad of an American parent.
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From page 252... ...
government administers to estimate unemployment rates and other indicators of labor market activity. The sampling universe for this survey is the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States.
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From page 253... ...
Overall, the average educational attainment for men increases from 12.1 years in the first generation to 13.9 in the second, surpassing the average educational attainment of 13.8 years for the general population of third generation and higher white Americans. For women the second generation has an average educational attainment of 14.0 years, also surpassing the average of 13.9 years for all third generation and higher white Americans (Table 6-2)
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From page 254... ...
The solid regression lines in the figures highlight the central tendencies of the relationships between the average education levels of second-generation individuals from a particular source country and those of their immigrant ancestors. The dashed horizontal and vertical lines represent the average educational attainment for all non-Hispanic third generation and higher white Americans in the younger (25-34 years of age)
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From page 255... ...
, Mexicans and Dominicans are still below the third generation and higher white American reference group, but Central American women are almost equal to their reference group. The relatively low educational attainment of most of these groups reflects the lower educational attainment of their im migrant parents, but may also be attributed to a variety of factors, including discrimination (Telles and Ortiz, 2008; Brenner and Graham, 2011)
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From page 256... ...
For Mexican Americans, this might include the "true" third generation -- people whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico, but because Mexican migration has occurred over centuries, it would also include, fifth, sixth, and seventh generation Mexicans, including those people whose ancestors never "immigrated" but instead remained in the Southwest as it changed
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From page 257... ...
Table 6-3 provides data on average education by race/ethnicity, sex, and generation for Hispanic subgroups and for whites, blacks and Asians. Among all groups, the data show generational progress between the first and second generations, but the data suggest little progress and even some decline between the second and third+ generations.
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From page 258... ...
The samples include people ages 25-59. The "first generation" consists of foreign-born individuals, excluding those born abroad of an American parent.
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From page 259... ...
Explaining Mexican American Educational Outcomes in the Third Generation Because Mexican Americans are the largest immigrant group to the United States and have one of the longest histories of migration, an important question is whether their educational gains continue after the second generation, as Smith (2012) suggested, or stall or stagnate as other scholars have argued, such as Telles and Ortiz (2008)
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From page 260... ...
Accurately Measuring the Third Generation Intermarriage and selective identification among mixed ancestry individuals is a serious obstacle when using self-identification data such as the CPS data on third and higher generation Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans have had relatively high levels of intermarriage with other American ethnic groups, especially in later generations, and the children of such intermarriages are less likely to self-identify as Mexican than are the children of two Mexican-origin parents (Alba and Islam, 2009; Duncan and Trejo, 2009)
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From page 261... ...
Explanations for Slow Educational Progress The other interpretation of apparent Mexican American educational "stagnation" is to accept that there is less progress for the third generation and attempt to explain it through discrimination, racialization, and other factors such as family socialization. There is substantial historical evidence of third generation stagnation among Mexican Americans.
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From page 262... ...
. This handicap of legal status is relevant in considering the low educational attainment of second generation Mexicans and Central Americans, both of which are groups with high rates of undocumented status in the immigrant generation.
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, these recent results, if confirmed as continuing trends, point to rising educational levels for young Hispanic Americans. In sum, although there is historical evidence to worry about the educational progress of Hispanic American youth, and Mexican American generations over time, recent studies provide reasons to be more optimistic.
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From page 264... ...
during the first few years after arrival in the United States; thereafter, employment rates did not change much with further time in the country.5 As a result, if one disregards recent arrivals and instead focuses on the employment rates of immigrants who have been here long enough to be past the initial period of adjustment to the U.S. labor market, employment rates for the foreign-born are a few percentage points higher than those shown in Table 6-5 (Duncan and Trejo, 2012)
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for further details on methodology. SOURCE: Data from 2003-2013 Current Population Survey outgoing rotation group data.
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From page 266... ...
The bottom panel of each figure shows what happens to the estimated employment differentials when the underlying regressions also control for education level. Figure 6-3 indicates that, for men, in spite of the low educational levels of Hispanic immigrants in general and Mexican immigrants in particular, these two groups had employment rates very similar to those of third and higher generation non-Hispanic whites.
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. NOTE: The reported figures represent employment rate differentials between each race/ethnicity and immigrant generation group and the reference group of third+ generation, non-Hispanic whites.
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From page 268... ...
. NOTE: The reported figures represent employment rate differentials between each race/ethnicity and immigrant generation group and the reference group of third+ generation, non-Hispanic whites.
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From page 269... ...
Conditioning on education has only minor effects on these deficits.7 For women, Figure 6-4 shows that employment rates were relatively low for first-generation Hispanics, especially for immigrants from Mexico. For first-generation Hispanic women, the employment deficit relative to the reference group of third generation and higher non-Hispanic white women is 17 percentage points; for first-generation Mexican women the deficit climbs above 23 percentage points.
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From page 270... ...
, which criminalized the hiring of undocumented workers, and the massive increase in the number of undocumented migrants in labor markets throughout the United States have put substantial downward pressure on the wages not just of undocumented migrants but of all immigrant workers (Donato and Massey, 1993; Donato et al., 2008; Massey and Gelatt, 2010; Massey and Gentsch, 2014; Warren and Warren, 2013)
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From page 271... ...
In addition, Hispanic gains in educational attainment between the first and second generations appear to play an important role in the earnings progress between these generations. Among the U.S.-born groups, third and higher generation black men stand out, with earnings deficits that remain large even after controlling for 9 Here, the dependent variable for the underlying regressions is the natural logarithm of weekly earnings from wage and salary work (the CPS outgoing rotation group data do not report self-employment income)
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Mexican Black Asian FIGURE 6-5 Weekly earnings differentials of men, ages 25-59, by race/ethnicity and immigrant generation (relative to third+ generation, non-Hispanic whites)
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. NOTE: The reported figures represent log weekly earnings differentials between each race/ethnicity and immigrant generation group and the reference group of Figure 6-6b third+ generation, non-Hispanic whites.
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From page 274... ...
labor market opportunities for Hispanics are more similar to those of whites than are the opportunities for blacks (Trejo, 1997; Grogger and Trejo, 2002; Duncan et al., 2006)
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From page 275... ...
At the top of the earnings distribution, we identified seven detailed occupations within the major group of Managerial and Professional Specialty Occupations. Military Occupations is only included for the sake of completeness among all workers in the Experienced Labor Force, since relatively few immigrants are in military occupations.
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From page 276... ...
276 THE INTEGRATION OF IMMIGRANTS INTO AMERICAN SOCIETY TABLE 6-6 Index of Relative Occupational Concentration of ForeignBorn Workers, Ages 25-64, of Experienced Labor Force, United States, 1950 to 2010 IPUMS Codes Total Experienced Labor Force with Reported Occupation 003-200 MANAGERIAL AND PROFESSIONAL SPECIALTY OCCUPATIONS 003-037 1 Exec., Admin., and Managerial and Related 043-059 2 Engineers, Architects, and Surveyors 064-068 3 Mathematical and Computer Scientists 069-083 4 Natural Scientists 084-089 5 Physicians and Other Health Diagnosing 183-200 6 Writers, Artists, Entertainers, and Athletes 095-179, 200 7 Health, Teachers, Lawyers, Religious and Other Related Professionals 201-400 TECHNICAL, SALES, AND ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT OCCUPATIONS 203-235 8 Technicians and Related Support Occupations 243-283 9 Sales Occupations 303-389 10 Administrative Support Occupations, Clerical 401-470 SERVICE OCCUPATIONS 405-407 11 Private Household Occupations 415-427 12 Protective Service Occupations 434-444 13 Food Preparation and Service Occupations 445-447 14 Health Service Occupations 448-455 15 Cleaning and Building Service, Except Households 456-469 16 Personal Service Occupations 471-500 FARMING, FORESTRY, AND FISHING OCCUPATIONS 473-476 17 Farm Operators and Managers 479-498 18 Other Agricultural and Related Occupations
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From page 277... ...
SOCIOECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION 277 Index of Relative Occupational Concentration 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1.23 1.04 1.02 0.96 0.87 0.82 0.86 1.54 1.16 0.94 0.89 0.84 0.80 0.84 0.86 1.12 1.52 1.53 1.43 1.32 1.42 0.98 0.87 0.85 1.14 1.23 1.06 1.17 0.73 1.23 1.84 1.50 1.52 2.22 2.38 1.36 2.21 2.93 2.74 2.00 1.88 1.83 1.12 1.24 1.40 1.18 0.99 0.86 0.88 0.66 0.72 0.86 0.79 0.68 0.64 0.69 0.63 0.76 0.86 0.82 0.82 0.79 0.79 0.83 0.92 1.10 1.06 1.02 1.09 1.13 0.83 0.91 0.88 0.80 0.86 0.85 0.82 0.52 0.66 0.83 0.79 0.76 0.70 0.68 1.38 1.23 1.15 1.20 1.33 1.31 1.36 2.12 1.93 1.41 1.97 2.66 3.10 4.09 0.95 0.58 0.40 0.47 0.50 0.47 0.45 1.50 1.30 1.36 1.36 1.54 1.49 1.42 0.60 0.73 0.87 1.02 1.03 1.12 1.28 1.97 1.71 1.36 1.19 1.46 1.56 1.58 1.23 1.15 0.96 1.17 1.19 1.12 1.24 0.54 0.82 0.88 1.18 1.60 1.98 1.85 0.40 0.43 0.33 0.30 0.39 0.36 0.27 0.72 1.23 1.32 1.83 2.36 2.74 2.41 continued
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From page 278... ...
] Where FBI = the number of foreign-born workers in occupation i FBt = the total number of foreign-born workers in the experienced labor force with a reported occupation NBI = the number of native-born workers in occupation i NBt = the total number of native-born workers in the experienced labor force with a reported occupation SOURCE: Ruggles et al.
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From page 279... ...
. Consistent immigrant occupations include service workers in private households, food preparation, and in cleaning and building services.
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is not related to the size or growth of specific occupations. Each of the highly skilled professions are very small (about 1 to 2% or less of the experienced labor force)
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From page 281... ...
As the table shows, the Mexican and Central American second generations make a large leap in occupational terms, relative to the first generation in this dataset. Twenty-two percent of second generation Mexican men and 31 percent of second generation Central American men were in professional or managerial positions; the latter figure is intermediate between that for third generation Hispanic men and third generation Anglo men.
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. SOURCE: Data from 2003-2013 Current Population Survey outgoing rotation group data.
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From page 283... ...
labor market at very high occupational levels (Table 6-7) , so the question pertinent to their second generations is whether this favorable occupational placement can be maintained.
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Among non-Hispanic white and Asian immigrant populations, the poverty rates among the foreign-born were higher than for their nativeborn counterparts (see Table 6-8)
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In an additional analysis for the panel, a common measure of "deep poverty" was calculated, defined as the share of the population below one-half of the poverty income threshold. These deep poverty rates are included in Table 6-8.
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From page 286... ...
Table 6-8 shows similar patterns of deep poverty across the racial and ethnic groups in the table.17 Generational Differences in Poverty The above differences in poverty rates for the foreign-born compared with native-born counterparts suggest there may be potentially large generation-to-generation differences as well. Tables 6-9 and 6-10 provide 2013 poverty rates by generation (i.e., foreign-born or first generation, second generation, and third generation and higher for adults and children, respectively.
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From page 287... ...
TABLE 6-9 Percentage of Adults in Poverty, 2013, by Immigrant Generation, Race, and Hispanic Origin Native Poverty Status Total Foreign-Born 2nd Generation 3rd+ Generation Total Native Total Poverty 12.8 18.8 13.6 11.5 11.7 Deep poverty 5.6 7.6 5.8 5.1 5.2 Hispanic Poverty 21.6 25.0 18.1 17.4 17.6 Deep poverty 8.3 9.1 7.3 7.6 7.5 Non-Hispanic Poverty 11.3 13.1 9.0 11.2 11.1 Deep poverty 5.1 6.3 4.4 5.0 5.0 White Poverty 9.0 12.9 8.8 8.9 8.8 Deep poverty 4.0 6.2 3.1 4.0 4.0 Black Poverty 22.8 18.8 -- -a 23.6 23.3 Deep poverty 10.1 8.8 -- -a 10.4 10.3 Asian Poverty 11.0 11.5 9.1 9.1 9.1 Deep poverty 5.7 5.6 6.0 5.8 6.0 NOTE: a denotes cell with 30 or fewer cases. SOURCE: Data from 2014 March Current Population Survey.
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From page 288... ...
288 TABLE 6-10 Percentage of Children in Poverty, 2013, by Immigrant Generation, Race, and Hispanic Origin Native Poverty Status Total Foreign Born 2nd Generation 3rd+ Generation Total Native Total Poverty 19.8 30.2 29.1 17.6 19.8 Deep poverty 8.8 13.1 10.5 8.2 8.8 Hispanic Poverty 30.2 37.0 38.3 23.8 30.2 Deep poverty 12.7 14.1 14.2 11.6 12.7 Non-Hispanic Poverty 16.5 25.0 14.6 16.4 16.5 Deep poverty 7.5 12.3 4.6 7.6 7.5 White Poverty 10.6 28.6 13.4 10.2 10.6 Deep poverty 4.5 17.9 5.3 4.3 4.5 Black Poverty 38.9 39.7 30.3 39.8 38.9 Deep poverty 19.0 13.8 9.5 20.3 19.0 Asian Poverty 10.2 16.8 7.9 10.5 10.2 Deep poverty 4.1 8.3 2.0 6.1 4.1 SOURCE: Data from 2014 March Current Population Survey. Table was created courtesy of Youngmin Yi, Department of Sociology, Cornell University.
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From page 289... ...
Among blacks, most adults in the survey were either foreign born or third and higher generation native born. For black adults, the immigrant generation had a lower poverty rate than did the third and higher generation blacks (18.8 versus 23.3%)
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From page 290... ...
These poverty rates are very high, but are nevertheless lower than rates among second generation Hispanic children (38.3%)
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From page 291... ...
and the percentaged when the 2013 official poverty measures are used.19 The SPM in 2012 yielded lower overall (i.e, not broken down by ethnoracial group) poverty rates than the official rate (14.9% versus 16.0%, not shown 19 At this writing, the 2013 SPM is not available.
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From page 292... ...
The implication is that the official poverty rates may misrepresent the degree of family hardship among immigrant populations, especially if immigrant groups do not have access to government resources (e.g., SNAP or TANF) or if the economies of family size implied by current poverty income thresholds do not accurately gauge the economic implications of characteristic features of immigrant families (e.g., large size and household extension in multi-generation households)
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From page 293... ...
For second and later generation men, employ ment varies by ethnicity and race: Hispanic men still have high em ployment rates when their lower education is taken into account, and Asian men are integrating into the non-Hispanic white population by this measure, but the employment rates for second generation blacks appear to be moving toward those for the general black native-born population, for whom higher education does not translate into higher employment rates. Among women the above pattern is reversed, with a substantially lower employment rate for immigrants than for the native-born in general.
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From page 294... ...
. Pooling together individuals from the third and later generations might hide progress for Mexican Americans because many of those in generations beyond the third have ancestors who grew up in places and times (e.g., Texas in the 19th and early 20th centuries)
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From page 295... ...
Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa arrive with relatively high levels of schooling, and second generation members of these groups meet or exceed, on average, the educational attainment of third and higher generation Americans in general, but other things being equal, black immigrants experience a substantial earnings penalty in excess of 16 percent as skin color darkens. Second generation black men have substantial employment and earnings deficits similar to those of third and higher generation African American men, and these deficits are much larger for U.S.-born blacks than they are for U.S.-born Hispanics, especially after controlling for education.
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From page 296... ...
. Mexican Americans as a paradigm for contemporary intra-group heterogeneity.
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From page 297... ...
. The labor market status of immigrants: Effects of the unemployment rate at arrival and duration of residence.
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From page 298... ...
. Intermarriage and the intergenerational transmission of ethnic identity and human capital for Mexican Americans.
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From page 299... ...
. Labor market outcomes for legal Mexican immigrants under the new regime of immigration enforcement.
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From page 300... ...
Labor market outcomes of Mexican-origin workers. International Migration Review, 44, 830-868.
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From page 301... ...
. Labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the United States: 1970 to 1990.
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From page 302... ...
. Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race.
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