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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

#121

Post by leftyted »

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 only fails to be encouraging if you're ideologically opposed to the theory that "personal efforts matter".

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

#122

Post by tropo »

jdkee wrote: post #107
tropo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The countries you cite are all relatively homogenous. The U.S. has greater disparities in education funding due to funding coming primarily from local sources rather than national.

Sweden and Germany are no longer homogeneous at all, and anyway isn't diversity supposed to be a strength?

The specific example I gave, DC, simply destroys the argument that local funding is the problem. DC is very well-funded from national sources, and it has horrific schools.

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

#123

Post by vkou »

sratner wrote: post #114
allenu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> (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.

1. Those peers may have spouses/SOs, that, depending on their profession would turn into stay-at-home house-wives/husbands, if the peer moves into the US. This is an immediate show-stopper for a lot of people.

2. Those peers may value Canadian culture more then the person you're responding to. That doesn't mean that the person who moves to the US for better paying work values US culture. They may prefer Canadian culture - just not $200,000/year prefer.

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

#124

Post by Apocryphon »

rayiner wrote: post #96
GuiA wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote is often used as a dog whistle by far right groups. In their definition, “weak” is caring about others, providing services to citizens like healthcare and education etc. “Strong” is then the Trumpian ideal of a successful self made business man who takes no nonsense from no one and gets things done regardless of their snowflake feelings (sic).

So? I find the quote very compelling as someone from a family of immigrants. My cousins left Bangladesh as children. Their parents left professional jobs to take service jobs (“hard times”). But the kids worked hard, majored in engineering, science, business, medicine, and accounting (“strong men and women”), and secured professional jobs for themselves (“good times”). I see the next generation being bombarded with i…

Quotations, like any other meme, do not exist in a vacuum, and are sometimes taken up by ideologies to justify different agendas. It's fine to like a quote for the value it resonates with oneself, but you can't ignore that it also exists within a larger culture- http://tiny.cc/pinojz

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

#125

Post by nostrademons »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #115
nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if their country of origin is meritocratic and market-driven. As many flaws as the U.S. has, it generally ranks pretty well on these aspects.

Put another way, many societies have artificial ceilings on the social status and income you can attain regardless of your intelligence, education, drive, ambition, and resourcefulness. Caste systems, guanxi, racial prejudice, endemic corruption, drug cartels that will kill you if you don't help them out, organized crime, warlords that will kill you, lack of infrastructure, etc. When you leave that country and go to one that allows free contracts between people, your social standing - and your children's, to the extent that these traits are heritable - should rise to its natural level, where it would be in the absence of arbitrary restrictions.

There's another level of selection bias where people who feel like all these arbitrary restrictions work in their favor don't tend to leave their home countries. So those people who you speak of who would mean revert - the folks that are above average and have a good deal in their home country - would be underrepresented within the immigrant sample, to the extent that they can realize when they have a good deal. (This is the same principle by which contracts and free trade raise general welfare: people who already have what they need choose not to trade and drop out of the sample, which then consists only of people who feel they are better off trading for something someone else has.)

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

#126

Post by vparikh »

jdmg94 wrote: post #116
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?

I should have clarified - I was 4 and my sister was 2 when my parents immigrated.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

namirez wrote: post #83
nostrademons wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Categorically false! Most of immigration to the US is family based; actually about two-third of them. source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-a...

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by babesh »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #118
toasterlovin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Actually a significant percentage have. The US is 16.7% Hispanic. That is over 50 million people. The population of Mexico is a little over 120 million.

I would bet that if there were no barriers to immigration then you would see a significantly higher Hispanic population in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Hispanic_and...

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

#130

Post by allovernow »

JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #118
toasterlovin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

>Why haven't 80% of all Mexican or Central American citizens relocated to the US?

Because we [rightfully, as this thread suggests] restrict border crossings.

>Or conversely, why haven't tons of the homeless in the US made their way to Mexico?

Because homeless people understand that the minimum protections and niche lifestyle they have here are orders of magnitude better than a violent third world country.

>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.

Considering the difficulty of illegally crossing the border for a poor South American, we are seeing just that. There's another selection bias here - those who are competent are less likely to risk illegal entry because they understand life as an illegal immigrant is difficult.

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