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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

#241

Post by tasuki »

watwut wrote: post #162
tathougies wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, easy, I've seen this statement used several times to criticize younger generations because things were harder "back in my day". Except for some very specific times in history, it is almost universally true that the older generation had harder times. Human progress is -- in the grand scheme of things -- a march towards much easier lives.

Those very specific periods are quite often. For huge amount of world population, it is right now.

Today, most people have much easier lives than their parents. The amount of material comfort most are enjoying is frankly staggering.

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

#242

Post by Mvandenbergh »

nostrademons wrote: post #125
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kil…

But wouldn't those artificial ceilings also prevent immigration applicants from having the "paperwork" to show their capability which is precisely what the American immigration bureaucracy will look at? It's not like they're letting immigrants in based on an IQ test, they're letting people in because they have elite degrees, are admitted to American universities, or have American job offers. All of those are indicators of status already achieved rather than potential status which has been supressed by local conditions in their country of origin.

In other words, immigrants coming in through the highly qualified routes are already high status in their countries of origin. Indians coming to the US on H1Bs for instance are overwhelmingly from high caste social groups and educated at the best Indian universities.

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

#243

Post by watwut »

tasuki wrote: post #241
watwut wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those very specific periods are quite often. For huge amount of world population, it is right now.

Today, most people have much easier lives than their parents. The amount of material comfort most are enjoying is frankly staggering.

I was referring to places with war and right after war. Places where ISIS can still come back and places that were either destabilized or had attempts at democratic revolutions suppressed. Historically, wars and revolutions are not some rare exceptions. It gets very very bad then better, then it starts failing and then again very very bad.

Overall trend may be positive, but there are enough local downfalls to make the "universally true that the older generation had harder times" not really true. It any given moment it can go either way. The whole first half of 20century was one massive downfall after another.

In particular with economy, you have years where it is easy to get a job for anyone who breathe and then downfall when it is hard for everyone.

Whole economies went down and unemployment rates went up. All that produces plenty of young people who have it harder then their parents.

I personally got a job easily. It is quite possible that my kids won't.

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

#244

Post by amf12 »

christiansakai wrote: post #89
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 am an immigrant (a lucky one, to obtain GC lottery). My US born peers considered me successful (relative to them). They often talks to me about their situation and I just gave them advice of what worked for me. Based on my conversation with them. I think it made me more aware that I'm definitely not a regular person even compared to my fellow home country citizens. I am more restless, more ambitious, more condition…

> I am an immigrant (a lucky one, to obtain GC lottery).

> Yes I can say there is definitely a selection bias

I think this is an anecdote. You might certainly be ambitious, intelligent and overall successful. But I quite don't understand the selection bias specifically in the GC lottery category. You don't really need any any education, wealth, ambition to apply for and get through the GC lottery. The only thing you need is to be willing to uproot your life and move (and this might be the example of 'ambition' in this case).

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

#245

Post by imtringued »

allovernow wrote: post #130
JakeTheAndroid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

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

That never stopped anyone.

>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.

Not everyone in a country actually hates it enough to leave. There are lots of high class people like CEOs, managers, software developers even if they are the minority they clearly live a reasonably good life. You are also underestimating how much people are fond of their home country and the associated culture. All your family and friends are there. Your mother tongue is probably only spoken there. The food that you used to eat as a child is there. Maybe you had a plot of land and you built your own house there, sure it isn't as comfortable as one in the USA but it was yours and in the USA you have nothing except a cramped apartment you share with room mates.

The idea that a country would lose its entire population if the USA lifted border controls is absolutely insane.

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

#246

Post by tasuki »

watwut wrote: post #243
tasuki wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, most people have much easier lives than their parents. The amount of material comfort most are enjoying is frankly staggering.

I was referring to places with war and right after war. Places where ISIS can still come back and places that were either destabilized or had attempts at democratic revolutions suppressed. Historically, wars and revolutions are not some rare exceptions. It gets very very bad then better, then it starts failing and then again very very bad. Overall trend may be positive, but there are enough local downfalls to make th…

Unfortunately, no disagreements to be had here...

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

#247

Post by imtringued »

sunkenvicar wrote: post #191

American children are struggling because migrant children are taking all the good jobs. Mass migration is a disaster for American families.

You're completely wrong. The anti immigrant sentiment is mostly about low skilled work being undervalued because the application pool is filled with immigrants who usually have no other choice because of language barriers or lack of recognition of foreign education. You can definitively argue that this hurts the bottom American families the most. Those who fell to the bottom because they lost their job permanently (e.g. coal workers) don't have a low skilled job as a fall back because salaries are being driven down by immigrants. Again as I have said the downsides of immigration are an oversupply of workers in specific industries which drive salaries down. If migrant children were truly "taking all the good jobs" then those good jobs would cease to be good jobs and become low income as well. This is obviously not happening. Once an immigrant is no longer under H1B visa restrictions by obtaining a green card their salary shoots up because they can find better employers.

Finally does it matter if it is a disaster for American families especially if the newcomers will become one of those American families as well? If you want to reduce suffering in this world then you would start with those that suffer the most. Lets use refugees after WW2 as an example. As you may know Germany was divided into two pieces. What you may not know is that the third piece was given to Poland and Poland had to give Russia land on its eastern border. This means millions of polish people were forced to immigrate. Then there were the Germans of which 8 million had to migrate out of Poland. What are you going to do with such a huge influx of refugees? Just let them rot in a foreign country? Let them into your country even you can't feed or house everyone because of the war? Of course you let them in. It's the only right thing to do.

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

#248

Post by int_19h »

akamoonknight wrote: post #149
namirez wrote: post #83

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 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...

That brings up a slightly different aspect in my mind, that children of immigrants might be more than likely to be surrounded by large amounts of family members which probably tends to have a positive effect?

One major effect is that when grandparents are there to watch the kids, the parents can devote more time and effort to their career, especially women. Have you ever noticed that in IT, women are more proportionally represented among immigrants, often from countries that are more socially conservative overall (Eastern Europe, South and East Asia etc).

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

#249

Post by codegeek »

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…

I mean aren't you talking about most Indian-Americans if not all :). Being an Indian-American myself (first generation even though I came here at a very young age), what you described is pretty much how we live.

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

#250

Post by dangerlibrary »

rayiner wrote: post #229
dangerlibrary wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the vast majority of our primary and secondary school funding comes from local property taxes, no? That creates situations where wealthy districts have excess resources, while poorer districts are artificially limited. Something as simple as bundling up school funds to the state level and redistributing similar per-pupil funds back to districts might help to close the gap - with no change in total expenditure.

That’s not true. Localities provide 45% of school funding, while states provide another 45%, and the federal government provides about 10%: https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/fut... Local funding is in fact uneven. But state and federal funding is primarily directed to eliminating those disparities: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco... > The paper then examines changes…

The report you cite from the tax policy center indicates that 30% of variation in school funding is still within-state between districts, so I'm not sure why they feel comfortable asserting that "spending levels across districts have converged". The authors also point out that district-level funding analyses gloss over large spending disparities between schools within districts.
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