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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

#111

Post by booboolayla »

jeffdavis wrote: post #50
bsanr2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don't exclude African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a whole. All of this seems to suggest tha…

"...there is something about the American education system - and perhaps our overal culture - that is failing our children..." Perhaps the whole idea that there's a "system" that's responsible for everyone's success is the problem?

^^^ this. Whenever I hear someone blame "the system" I cringe inside.

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

#112

Post by virtuous_signal »

godelski wrote: post #100
nostrademons wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take an initial immigrant who gets in because of the merit categories and then have them bring over all their family members, whose gene pool ends up in the U.S? Whose family values? This article is about upward mobility in the children of immigrants. What traits do children get from their parents? Most people would say it's nature (their genes) and nurture (their upbringing). All of these are widely shared with…

As far as I'm aware, there's no strong link between motivation and generics.

I don't know if "motivation" per se is studied in this context, but the genetic links for at least "self-regulation"[1], "self-control"[2], and "political ambition"[3] have been studied:

[1]https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspp0000224

[2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...

[3]https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-017-9429-1

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

#113

Post by maerF0x0 »

spappletrap wrote: post #66
maerF0x0 wrote: post #57

I often tell people to watch out for selection bias. Immigrants are a distinctly unique people. They're not just members of their foreign racial/national group, they're members of their foreign racial/national group with the ambitions/motivations to leave. To make the abstract concrete. Canadians living in the US are often thought to be "just like" Canadians living in Canada. But they're often not. Often they're the…

>they're members of their foreign racial/national group with the ambitions/motivations to leave. And resources and community connections... even if they come here with little or no money, they had to have something to leave. It's expensive as hell to move to a new city without a job lined up, let alone a new country.

> without a job lined up

in many immigrants case they only can come w/ a job lined up (ie, they get a visa via a job)

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

#114

Post by sratner »

allenu wrote: post #74
maerF0x0 wrote: post #57

I often tell people to watch out for selection bias. Immigrants are a distinctly unique people. They're not just members of their foreign racial/national group, they're members of their foreign racial/national group with the ambitions/motivations to leave. To make the abstract concrete. Canadians living in the US are often thought to be "just like" Canadians living in Canada. But they're often not. Often they're the…

I think the "didn't fit into Canadian culture, or found something imminently attractive about US life" may be reading too much into things. It's more like those people just found good jobs in the US that weren't available in their country. I'm a Canadian and found a great job in the US and moved down. I didn't move down thinking the culture would be better and then found work.

I think you did find something imminently attractive about US life: said great job. Do not underplay the fact that many of your peers (a) wouldn't even look for "a great job in the US", and (b) wouldn't move for it if one landed at their feet. There are plenty of things I may dislike about US, yet I am also here by choice rather than necessity.

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

#115

Post by Mvandenbergh »

nostrademons wrote: post #64
maerF0x0 wrote: post #57

I often tell people to watch out for selection bias. Immigrants are a distinctly unique people. They're not just members of their foreign racial/national group, they're members of their foreign racial/national group with the ambitions/motivations to leave. To make the abstract concrete. Canadians living in the US are often thought to be "just like" Canadians living in Canada. But they're often not. Often they're the…

There's also significant selection bias on the entry side. U.S. immigration policies are heavily biased towards people with unique skills, high levels of education, and a fair amount of money in their home country, and biased against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance. That means that most hyphenated-Americans have already passed two significant high-pass filters: they have to be willing to upro…

Wouldn't that lead to the opposite effect? If you take an above average subset, you will have less upward mobility in their children because of mean reversion. If your parents are top decile already then there is a lot more room below you than above you.

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

#116

Post by jdmg94 »

vparikh wrote: post #67

Being a first generation immigrant myself (parents immigrated to America in 1975) I can give a few cultural reasons: 1. Stable two parent home - my parents lived together and shielded us from any arguments/disagreements they had and presented a stable unified upbringing 2. My father had a degree in Microbiology, but when he first migrated had to take a less paying job due to language/racism. My mother had a high scho…

If you're born into America to Immigrant parents, doesn't that make you a second generation immigrant?

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

#117

Post by bsanr2 »

tropo wrote: post #80
rhacker wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. While you're covering multiple topics, I wanted to touch on the education specifically. I think a huge reason for our problematic education system is lack of competition for teaching jobs. If there's a job at a startup that's willing to pay someone for math at $100k (avg in mixed locations) - $300k (avg in silicon valley) how are we ever going to have excellent math teachers. The people competing for a 50k te…

If education in the USA is underfunded, then education is underfunded in pretty much every country. The USA pays more per student than Japan, Sweden, Germany, and Korea. Look: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp So that isn't the problem, at least relative to the rest of the world. The worst schools in the USA seem to spend the most. Maybe the money is anti-educational, being used to purchase distracti…

Funding models differ greatly. Often those sky-high prices-per-student are because the schools are taking care of several meals a day for students, as well as before/after care, extracurriculars, and special needs programs, where all these initiatives are a necessity but unable to be provided by parents. In America, all of these are provided at higher cost and higher quality by wealthier parents themselves; in other countries, more robust social safety nets, more lenient workplace and parental leave policy, and occasionally higher real income/wealth per family allow parents to take on those needs at lower cost.

When combined with the prevalence of social intervention in the lives of poor families - up to and including removal of the children - you see that there is a profound and toxic distrust of these parents and of their ability to take care of their own children. We've allowed a model to grow where, instead of ensuring people make enough to take care of their families, we shift the burden onto the state. This is inefficient in education for a number of reasons, least of which the central conceit as described above, which undermines the effort at its core.

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

#118

Post by JakeTheAndroid »

toasterlovin wrote: post #86
nostrademons wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a different form of positive selection bias for that: to survive in a country where you're there illegally, cut off from many high-paying jobs because of that, and may be deported at any time, it takes a particular form of resourcefulness and ambition. You'd expect these people to have fewer book smarts than highly-educated Indian and Chinese immigrants, but perhaps more street smarts. And to the extent that…

> it takes a particular form of resourcefulness and ambition. Or your home country just needs to be significantly worse.

I mean, we see people in fairly terrible countries not relocate. Why haven't 80% of all Mexican or Central American citizens relocated to the US? Or conversely, why haven't tons of the homeless in the US made their way to Mexico?

If these countries are really significantly worse, and that is the only factor pushing normal people to relocate, then we should be seeing massive population movements all the time. Instead, only the extremely motivated with a sizable risk appetite take the chance. And, one could argue that those two factors combined qualifies that group of people as non-standard.

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

#119

Post by huherto »

datashow wrote: post #99
tathougies wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this study is kind of saying "The children of ambitious and effortful parents have higher rates of upward mobility than the general populace of US people" But this is also important to note, as the common zeitgeist of the day says that upward mobility is impossible, but it is clear that with ambitious and effortful parents, children can have higher rates of social mobility. That is encouraging?

Not really encouraging. You can't make parents more ambitious and effortful. This is basically saying personal efforts matter. I believe this is not most upward mobility advocators want to hear.

It is encouraging because these particular children have upward mobility.

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

#120

Post by bsanr2 »

jeffdavis wrote: post #50
bsanr2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don't exclude African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a whole. All of this seems to suggest tha…

"...there is something about the American education system - and perhaps our overal culture - that is failing our children..." Perhaps the whole idea that there's a "system" that's responsible for everyone's success is the problem?

Probably not.
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