Assessing the Socioeconomic Mobility and Integration of U.S. Immigrants and Their Descendants

• Author: Brian Duncan,Stephen J. Trejo
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716214548396
• Date: 01 January 2015
• Subject Matter: Section II: Special Topics Relevant to Building a New Infrastructure

108 ANNALS, AAPSS, 657, January 2015

DOI: 10.1177/0002716214548396

Assessing the

Socioeconomic

Mobility and

Integration of

U.S.

Immigrants and

Their

Descendants

By

BRIAN DUNCAN

and

STEPHEN J. TREJO

548396ANN The Annals of the American AcademySocioeconomic Mobility and Integration

research-article2014

Over the last several decades, two of the most signifi-

cant developments in the U.S. labor market have been

(1) rising inequality and (2) growth in both the size and

the diversity of immigration flows. Because a large

share of new immigrants arrive with very low levels of

schooling, English proficiency, and other skills that

have become increasingly important determinants of

success in the U.S. labor market, such immigrants and

their descendants may be a poor fit for the restructured

economy and consequently have a difficult time inte-

grating into American society. In this article we discuss

some of the issues that arise when investigating the

socioeconomic integration of immigrants and their

U.S.-born descendants, and we selectively review

research on these topics. In addition, we consider what

kinds of supplementary information might be valuable

to collect to improve our understanding of immigrant

integration and of the intergenerational mobility expe-

rienced by immigrant families.

Keywords: immigration; assimilation; intergenera-

tional mobility; socioeconomic integration

Throughout U.S. history, immigration has

been an important component of demo-

graphic growth and played a key role in social

and economic development, and the past sev-

eral decades of resurgent immigration have

Brian Duncan is a professor of economics at the

University of Colorado Denver. His research focuses on

the economics of generosity, specifically examining the

conflicting motives individuals have for contributing to

charitable causes. He has also written on the economic

incentives of foster care and adoption, and on the inter-

generational progress of the descendants of Mexican

immigrants.

Stephen J. Trejo is a professor of economics at the

University of Texas at Austin. His current research

focuses on understanding patterns of intergenerational

mobility among U.S. immigrant groups, and one strand

of this work explores how selective intermarriage and

ethnic identification might distort standard measures of

socioeconomic attainment for the U.S.-born descend-

ants of immigrants.

SOCIOECONOMIC MOBILITY AND INTEGRATION 109

made this particularly evident. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population

rose from less than 5 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 2012 (Passel and Cohn

2008; Taylor 2013). By 2012, the U.S.-born children of immigrants made up

another 12 percent of the population, so fully a quarter of U.S. residents are

either first-generation immigrants or the second-generation children of immi-

grants. Since 1980, new immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants account for

almost 60 percent of U.S. population growth (Passel and Cohn 2008). Clearly,

immigrants are an integral part of contemporary U.S. society, and they are

expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. Passel and Cohn (2008) forecast

that new immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants will account for more than

80 percent of population growth from 2005 to 2050, and that by midcentury

almost 20 percent of U.S. residents will be foreign-born.

The socioeconomic mobility and integration of immigrants and their descend-

ants has long been of interest to academics and policy-makers, but never more so

than in recent years. The backdrop for resurgent U.S. immigration has been an

economy in which earnings inequality and the labor market rewards to education

and other indicators of worker skill have increased dramatically (Levy and

Murnane 1992; Autor and Katz 1999; Autor, Katz, and Kearney 2008). Because

a large share of new immigrants come from developing countries and arrive with

very low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other skills that have

become increasingly important determinants of success in the U.S. labor market,

such immigrants may be a poor fit for the restructured American economy. In

addition, the dramatic shift in the national origin composition of immigrant flows

that occurred in the last half of the twentieth century—away from predominately

white immigrants originating in Europe and Canada and toward immigrants

originating in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa—has led to a

remarkable increase in racial/ethnic diversity among U.S. immigrants.

Unfortunately, the most recent large-scale, nationally representative survey in

the United States that focused on measuring socioeconomic mobility was the

1973 Occupational Changes in a Generation (OCG) survey (Featherman and

Hauser 1978), which predates the latest wave of mass immigration. To a large

extent, the analytical approaches and data collection efforts useful for studying

socioeconomic mobility in the native population will also be useful for studying

such mobility in the immigrant population, but the study of immigrants does

entail special challenges and opportunities. In this article, we discuss some of the

unique issues that arise when investigating the socioeconomic mobility and inte-

gration of immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants. The next section pertains

to an analysis of the immigrants themselves, and the following section considers

issues relevant for studying the U.S.-born descendants of immigrants (i.e., the

so-called second and later generations).

First, however, it is instructive to lay out, in schematic terms, a few general

points regarding the measurement of socioeconomic mobility in immigrant fami-

lies. To this end, Figure 1 depicts the “generational time line” for a representative

adult immigrant to the United States and his (or her) U.S.-born child and grand-

child (the time line would change in obvious ways if the immigrant arrived in the

United States as a child rather than as an adult). In the typology employed here,