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Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

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Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#21

Post by wyxuan »

CaoCao wrote: post #20
screye wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1 to this. In order to even get an application for h1b there is even a requirement for employers that they are paid above a certain amount

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#22

Post by mistrial9 »

blakesterz wrote: post #4

This 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.

in a class-less society, where competition for cash is the elevator to wealth, high-pollution industry, treachery and predatory lending moves classes while "arts" does nothing..

These comments make it sound like "soft" people rightfully lose their chance at wealth, this is over-generalized, and badly so. People who build a social and artistic fabric, and do no harm, get run over by others with no social allegiance and a thirst for one result.

to strain this tangent further, it seems evident that industry and under-priced oil destroyed local craft, and the Internet and an entertainment-economy, has crushed fine arts practice in locale after locale.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#23

Post by rayiner »

screye wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #12

It'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…

> Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation.

The minimum salary for an H1-B Visa is $60,000, which would put someone at the 68-th percentile of individual income (or the fourth quantile). The statistics I am referring to are for asians whose parents had incomes in the lowest quantile (below about $19,000 today) between age 11-22.

Now, that could capture a lot of immigrants who have skills or education back home, but are underemployed once here. (E.g. college degree back home, but working in food service here.) But it excludes immigrants who were able to use their degrees or skills to provide financial advantages to their kids in the U.S.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#24

Post by dpark »

oblio wrote: post #14
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You don’t get to the meat of a statement like that by subjecting it to semantic analysis.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#25

Post by dx87 »

oblio wrote: post #14
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think of it as resiliance to adversity. If someone has had a comparatively easy life, they'll probably have a harder time dealing with difficult situations. The problem is that everything is relative, so people may not see their life as easy, even if it is compared to most people. For example, I used to work with someone who was raised by wealthy parents, went to super exclusive private schools, and had multiple college degrees paid for by their parents. They didn't think they had an easy life though, because their parents only had a couple million dollars in the bank, and his classmates were mostly old money with 10s or 100s of millions in the bank, so they wouldn't hang out with him because he was "poor".

The good thing is that resliance is like a muscle and can be strengthened, people just need to leave their comfort zone occasionally.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#26

Post by slumdev »

Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes in Outliers that children whose parents' efforts are rewarded are more likely to work hard themselves because their brains are wired from a young age to associate work with reward.

Immigrating to the United States, for a lot of people, is a great reward.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#27

Post by oblio »

dpark wrote: post #24
oblio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define weak and strong, though?

You don’t get to the meat of a statement like that by subjecting it to semantic analysis.

I do. That statement is a platitude.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#28

Post by yibg »

rayiner wrote: post #12

It'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’m what’s considered 1.5 generation immigrant. My parents are first gen immigrants and while I wasn’t born in the west, I spent a considerable portion of my childhood here. My parents friends and their children are all in similar situation with children arriving at different ages.

Anecdotally, all of the parents of this batch came poor, most of us were below poverty level because all of the parents came as older students (30s and some times 40s) doing their masters or PhD. None of their previous degrees or work experience counted so everyone started from scratch. Add to that the language and cultural barriers and it took everyone a while to get back on their feet.

The children though had no barrier other than being in poor families. Education and hard work were very much valued. The family situation were stable and there was a lot of time investment from the parents in helping with homework etc. There was also a push towards professions fields. My parents half jokingly said to me I can pick any field of study as long as it’s medicine, law or engineering (ended up in engineering). So end result, all the children are doing well professionally and financially. Definitely in the top quartile, but not super wealthy. From my own and my parents social circles this seems to be a very common pattern.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#29

Post by vincent-toups »

bigbadgoose wrote: post #9
chrisbennet wrote: post #3

I suspect that parents who "achieve" by coming to the U.S. are more likely to have children of the same persuasion.

People with enough gumption to upend their lives and leave everything they knew behind for an uncertain future … it's the "right stuff"

Is it the "right stuff"? One might just as plausibly expect such people to be highly risk tolerant and to end up screwing up really badly as often as they succeed.

Re: Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born

#30

Post by dpark »

oblio wrote: post #27
dpark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get to the meat of a statement like that by subjecting it to semantic analysis.

I do. That statement is a platitude.

You know what “strong” and “weak” mean. Should we also define what constitutes “hard times”? Or what “men” are?

If you have an issue with the statement, just say it. Don’t hide your criticism behind supposed ambiguity.

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