How much of this is attributable to immigrants clustering in highly productive urban areas?
Which is cause and which is effect? (It could be a virtuous cycle.)
Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
11–20 of 267 posts
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#12It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race....
If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probability one would except of there was zero correlation between child and parent incomes). For Asian Americans its almost 27%. A white child born in the bottom quantile is about 2.5 times more likely to stay in the bottom quantile (28%) than to rise to the top quantile (12%). An asian child born in the bottom quantile is about 1.5 times more likely to rise to the top quantile (27%) than to stay in the bottom quantile (12%).
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#13This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy: "Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.
John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
Relatedly, Michael Hopf: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#14This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy: "Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.
John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestr…
How do you define weak and strong, though?
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#15While this is good to see verified, and I absolutely think it is important to rigorously double-check whether things that "make sense" are actually true, it would have been really surprising if this were not true.
1) immigrants often have language difficulties that their children do not
2) immigrants often have cultural knowledge difficulties that their children do not
3) immigrants often have moved to places (both country and place within country) for the exact reason that they believe their children will do better there
But, again, just because it was predictable doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to have rigorously verified that it is so.
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#16It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race... . If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probab…
I think this might have to do with the type of Asian-Americans that immigrate to the US. (esp. this generation)
[Strike out] Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation. Almost by definition, this beings in the subset of Asians who grew up in a culture of education and hard work. [\Strike out]
I think, the cultural boon/curse of living vicariously through your child also leads to parents pushing their child towards "lucrative" / "respected" careers.
There might also be a snow-ball effect, where Asians aspire to pursue careers where Asians have traditionally succeeded. That would be professions in STEM fields, which have high median wages.
[Strike out]The real title should be -> "Children of Asian immigrants who were top percentiles in their own countries, perform at a similarly high level"[\Strike out]
edit: didn't see the lower quartile number. Renders my argument invalid.
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#17This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy: "Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes." Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.
John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestr…
Also Voltaire quote: “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#18Immigrants are frequently working below what you'd expect of similarly talented/skilled/educated (especially if you exclude consideration of English language fluency) native born, so it's not really surprising that their children do better by comparison to them than the children of the native born.
Immigrants have left everything they know behind. They know they don't really know their way around, so they are raising their kids to be better than they were.
I know factory workers raising their kids to be a factory working running some machine on an assembly line. It never occurs to them to encourage their kids to be something. They know that their their own factory had 10 times as many factory workers just 30 years ago but not even that is enough for them to think they need to start thinking of getting their family to do something else.
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#19This is because people who immigrate are "artificially" pushed down in social status and income due to issues like differences in language, and not having some of your work or education experience recognized in the foreign country. These people are just "bouncing back". In some cases people who were professionals in their country of origin do relatively lower ranked or even menial work. Their children will be constantly reminded "I was a dentist back home, not a hygienist", which affects their self-image.
Back in their home country, people who are actually from a poorer class do not experience the same upward mobility.
That is all the more so in places that have caste or caste-like systems. Who your great-great-grandfather was still influences where you stand.
Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born
#20It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race... . If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probab…
I think this might have to do with the type of Asian-Americans that immigrate to the US. (esp. this generation) [Strike out] Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation. Almost by definition, this beings in the subset of Asians who grew up in a culture of education and hard work. [\Strike out] I think, the cultural boon/curse of living vicariously through your child also…
That's just immediately falsified by the fact that he's talking about children of Asian immigrants in the bottom quartile. The high-skilled visa workers are not in the bottom quartile.