U.S. Immigrants in Dispersed and Traditional Settlements: National Origin Heterogeneity

This paper uses confidential ACS data to compare the characteristics of immigrants from ten Asian and Latino origins and the total foreign born in traditional, emerging, and dispersed areas. The correlates of dispersed settlement were estimated for each group and the total foreign born using multinomial logistic regression. The findings show that the characteristics of immigrants in dispersed settlements differ both within and across national origin groups and also between national groups and the total foreign born. Several relationships, particularly those for education and occupation measures, differ significantly and call into question the homogeneity assumption commonly made by studies of the total foreign born or pan‐ethnic groups.     

Asset Ownership of New Asian Immigrants in the United States

This study examined the asset ownership of Asian immigrants using a nationally representative sample of newly legalized immigrants (New Immigrant Survey). Findings revealed that ownership of a business or farm, financial assets, and home ownership were associated with socioeconomic, demographic, and acculturation variables. Family income, education, English fluency, and length of stay were significant in all types of asset ownership. Variances in asset ownership by ethnic groups exist. Asian Indians and Koreans had higher levels of business asset ownership. Korean, and Filipino immigrants were also more likely to be homeowners. Asian Indian and Chinese immigrants were more likely to own financial assets. Vietnamese lagged in business or farm and financial asset ownership. Findings provided insights into the investment decisions of new Asian immigrants for financial educators, researchers, and policymakers.     

A Panel Study of Immigrants’ Overeducation and Earnings in Australia

The recent literature on overeducation has provided divergent results on whether or not overeducation bears an earnings penalty. In addition, few studies have considered overeducation among immigrants. This article uses panel data analyses to investigate the match between education and occupation and resulting earnings effects for immigrants from English‐Speaking and Non‐English Speaking Backgrounds, relative to the native‐born population in Australia. Based on nine years of longitudinal data, the panel approach addresses individual heterogeneity effects (motivation, ability, and compensating differentials) that are crucial in overeducation analysis. First, we find that immigrants have significantly higher incidence rates of overeducation than the native‐born. This probability increases, rather than diminishes, once we control for unobserved correlated effects. Second, based on panel fixed effects analyses there is no penalty for overeducation for ESB immigrants. However, NESB immigrants receive a lower return to required and overeducation compared to the other groups after controlling for individual heterogeneity.     

Economic Integration among Children of Israeli Immigrants in the United States

The paper analyses the economic assimilation of first, 1.5, and second generation Israeli Jewish immigrants in the United States. The empirical analyses are based on the 1990 public use sample (PUMS) that enables the identification of adult children of Jewish Israeli immigrants. The analyses show that all groups of Jewish Israeli immigrants in the United States are doing very well relative to a benchmark of native‐born Americans. The comparisons also indicate that children of immigrants — both men and women — are even more successful economically than the immigrants themselves. The economic success of Israeli immigrants and their offspring in the United States is due not only to their high level of education, but also to unmeasured traits that help them earn more than demographically comparable natives.     

Generational Patterns in Home Ownership and Housing Quality among Racial/Ethnic Groups in New York City, 1999

We use survey data for 1999 to evaluate how well the spatial assimilation model characterizes the generational patterns in housing conditions for racial/ethnic groups in New York City. Focusing on home ownership, crowding, and housing quality, bivariate analyses reveal that housing conditions improve across generations, but mainly for whites and other Hispanics. Among blacks, we find patterns of generational decline in housing conditions and socioeconomic status. Multivariate models reveal significant generational improvements among whites and Puerto Ricans with respect to home ownership and among whites, blacks, and other Hispanics, with respect to crowding. However, notable generational declines are evident for blacks in home ownership and housing quality. Broad support for spatial assimilation theory is evident in the associations of socioeconomic status with housing conditions, but the results for blacks raise questions about the overall primacy of the spatial assimilation model.     

The Immigrant Advantage in Adolescent Educational Expectations

Previous research has shown uniquely high expectations among children of immigrants. However, existing studies have not focused on why children of immigrants have an expectations advantage over their native‐born counterparts or if this has changed over time. This study shows that an immigrant advantage in graduate school expectations persists among adolescent children of immigrants today. Regression analyses reveal that this advantage is largely explained by higher parental expectations, greater interest in school, and foreign language use in early childhood. We argue that these factors can be conceptualized as forms of cultural capital stemming from unique aspects of the immigrant experience that are common across immigrant families.     

Differences in the Likelihood of Ownership of Retirement Saving Assets by the Foreign and Native-Born

This research compares the determinants of retirement savings asset ownership between the native-born and immigrants. Analysis of Survey of Income and Program Participation data indicate there do not appear to be differences in the likelihood of ownership between European or Asian immigrants and the native-born, but there are differences between Latin American immigrants and the native-born in retirement savings asset utilization. Distributional effects related to ethnic identity, income, and education appear to compound these differences. While factors indicating greater acculturation increase the likelihood of ownership for all immigrant groups, there are substantial differences in the way these variables affect ownership. General savings asset ownership is more affected by immigration, while retirement savings is more sensitive to acculturation and ethnic identity.     

Computer usage, destination language proficiency and the earnings of natives and immigrants

This paper uses the concept of a computer as a public good within the household to model the demand for computers at home. It also investigates the determinants, and consequences for earnings, of computer use. The equations are estimated using data on the native born and immigrants from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing in Australia. The multivariate analyses show that recent arrivals are more likely to use computers than the Australian born. The data suggests a high degree of favorable selection in migration as the level of computer use in Australia is much higher than in most of the countries that Australia’s immigrants come from. Those with a higher permanent income (education, household assets) are more likely to have a computer at home, but there is no effect of transitory income (unemployment). Immigrants who are more proficient in English are also more likely to use a computer. The relation between age and computer use is strongly influenced by cohort effects. Using a computer at home is associated with about 7% and 13% higher earnings for native-born and foreign-born men, respectively. For the immigrants, the effects of schooling and English language proficiency on earnings are greater among those who use a computer at home. This suggests complementarity in the labor market. The use of a computer is shown to be a way the foreign born can increase the international transferability of their pre-immigration skills, a finding that has implications for immigrant assimilation policies.

Moving Up in Rural America: Economic Attainment of Nonmetro Latino Immigrants

Rapid Hispanic population growth represents a pronounced demographic transformation in many nonmetropolitan counties, particularly since 1990. Its considerable public policy implications stem largely from high proportions of new foreign‐born residents. Despite the pressing need for information on new immigrants in nonmetro counties and a bourgeoning scholarship on new rural destinations, few quantitative analyses have measured systematically the social and economic well‐being of Latino immigrants. This study analyzes the importance of place for economic well‐being, an important public policy issue related to rural Hispanic population growth. We consider four measures of economic mobility: full‐time, year‐round employment; home ownership; poverty status; and income exceeding the median national income. We conduct this analysis for 2000 and 2006–2007 to capture two salient periods of nonmetro Hispanic population growth, using a typology that distinguishes among nonmetropolitan areas by the categories of “traditional” immigrant destinations concentrated in the Southwest and Northwest, “new” immigrant destinations to capture recent and rapid Hispanic population growth in the Midwest and Southeast, and “all other” rural destinations as a reference category representing more typical nonmetro population trends. We also compare our results to those for metropolitan destinations. We find that place type matters little for stable employment but more so for wealth accumulation and income security and mobility. Compared with urban Latino immigrants, rural Latino immigrants exhibit higher rates of homeownership as well as greater likelihoods of falling into poverty and lower likelihoods of earning a measure of U.S. median income. From 2000 to 2006–2007, rural‐urban differences deteriorated slightly in favor of urban areas. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings and those of addressing rural immigrant economic well‐being more generally.     

“Leaving Home Ain't Easy:” The timing and pathways of young immigrants’ home-leaving transitions

Leaving the parental home to live independently has long been a marker of one's transition to adulthood and a sign of immigrant adaptation to the host country. The timing and pathways of home-leaving are important for both the housing trajectories of young adults and the overall housing demand of immigrant receiving areas. However, young adults—immigrants or not— have increasingly been delaying this transition, opting instead to stay in the parental home for an extended period of time. In this paper, we conceptualize home-leaving as a decision made over time—influenced by individual, family, and contextual factors—and use panel data collected in the 2011 and 2017 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS). Through both a Cox proportional hazard model and a competing risk model, we examine the timing of exit from the parental home, the determinants of this exit, and the variable rates of independent household formation across immigrant, non-visible, and visible minority groups. We find, although the relationship is not always linear, generational status, as well as race and ethnicity, play an important role in not only the timing, but also the destination of home leaving, while age at arrival is particularly salient for racialized immigrant groups. Young immigrants of visible minority background are generally less likely to leave their parental home, even though immigrants to Canada are selected for their ability to succeed in Canada.     

The Great Recession and the Allure of New Immigrant Destinations in the United States

In the 1990s, the immigrant population in the United States dispersed to non‐traditional settlement locations (what have become known as “new immigrant destinations”). This paper examines whether the allure of new destinations persisted in the 2000s with a particular focus on the internal migration of the foreign‐born during the recent deep recessionary period and its aftermath. Three specific questions motivate the analysis. First, are immigrants, much like the U.S.‐born population, becoming less migratory within the country over time? Second, is immigrant dispersal from traditional gateways via internal migration continuing despite considerable economic contraction in many new destination metropolitan areas? Third, is immigration from aboard a substitute for what appears to be declining immigrant internal migration to new destinations? The findings reveal a close correlation between the declining internal migration propensity of the U.S.‐born and immigrants in the last two decades. We also observe parallels between the geographies of migration of native‐ and foreign‐born populations with both groups moving to similar metropolitan areas in the 1990s. This redistributive association, however, weakened in the subsequent decade as new destination metropolitan areas lost their appeal for both groups, especially immigrants. There is no evidence to suggest that immigration from abroad is substituting for the decline in immigrant redistribution through internal migration to new destinations. Across destination types, the relationship between immigration from abroad and the internal migration of the foreign‐born remained the same during and after the Great Recession as in the period immediately before it.     

Kin Effects on Black-White Account and Home Ownership

This article combines the literature on kin networks and racial disparities in asset ownership. Specifically, we examine the effects of kin characteristics—sibling poverty and parental poverty, education, and occupation—on financial account ownership and home ownership. We find that kin matter for these outcomes. Having a poor sibling and coming from a poor family are negatively associated with account and home ownership while mother's education has a positive effect. Separate analyses by race suggest that kin characteristics matter for both Blacks and Whites for account ownership, but for home ownership they are significant for Whites only. Racial differences in kin characteristics account for over half of the racial gap in account ownership, but are not important for understanding the racial gap in home ownership. The significant effects of extended family characteristics on socioeconomic well-being make a case for the inclusion of kin variables in the growing literature on wealth disparities among Blacks and Whites.     

Low-skilled immigrant entrepreneurship

More than ? of the foreign born workforce in the US have no schooling beyond high school and about 20% of the low-skilled workforce are immigrants. More than 10% of these low-skilled immigrants are self-employed. Utilizing longitudinal data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation panels, this paper analyzes the returns to self-employment among low-skilled immigrants. We find that the returns to low-skilled self-employment among immigrants is higher than it is among natives but also that wage/salary employment is a more financially rewarding option for most low-skilled immigrants. In analyses of earnings differences, we find that most of the 20% male native-immigrant earnings gap among low-skilled business owners can be explained primarily by differences in the ethnic composition. Low-skilled female foreign born entrepreneurs are found to have earnings roughly equal to otherwise observationally similar self-employed native born women.     

The Second Generation in Europe

The study of integration processes has now reached a crucial stage in most Western European countries with the emergence of the second generation. The oldest children born to postwar immigrants on European soil have recently entered the job market, and we can now investigate their performance in both education and employment. This opens a unique opportunity to compare the situations of second generation migrants across countries. Ostensibly the children all have the same starting position, being born in the country of settlement. The intriguing question is how differences between immigrant groups, and also differences in national contexts, work to the benefit or detriment of the second generation. We discuss the first issue briefly, confining ourselves here to Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. In addressing the issue of national contexts, we focus primarily on policies and practices rather than on broad‐reaching national integration models. We examine in detail the integration process itself in the context of vital institutional arrangements such as the education system and the mechanisms for transition to the labor market. How do such arrangements differ between countries, and how do they affect the outcomes for the second generation?     

Relocating Prejudice: A Transnational Approach to Understanding Immigrants' Racial Attitudes

Immigration is changing the racial composition of many societies. Yet leading theories of racial prejudice, even in a multiracial context, focus on dynamics in a single nation‐state and fail to account for the experiences of the foreign‐born. We adopt a transnational approach that incorporates processes creating prejudice from both inside and outside the receiving society and that shows how attitudes move across borders through immigration, transnationalism, and globalization. We draw upon two in‐depth studies of immigrants and those who stay in the home countries, focusing on Koreans' and Dominicans' attitudes toward Black Americans. By situating existing theories of racial prejudice within a transnational framework, we illustrate how models of transnationalism are relevant not just within immigration scholarship, but to more general processes of social change.     

The Homeownership Hierarchies of Canada and the United States: The Housing Patterns of White and Non‐White Immigrants of the Past Thirty Years1

In this paper two gaps in North American immigrant homeownership research are addressed. The first concerns the lack of studies (especially in Canada) that identify changes in homeownership rates by skin color over time, and the second relates to the shortage of comparative research between Canada and the United States on this topic. In this paper the homeownership levels and attainment rates of Black, Chinese, Filipino, White, and South Asian immigrants are compared in Canada and the United States for 1970/1971–2000/2001. For the most part, greater similarities than differences are found between the two countries. Both Canadian and U.S. Chinese and White immigrants have the highest adjusted homeownership rates of all groups, at times even exceeding comparably positioned native‐born households. Black immigrants, on the other hand, tend to have the lowest ownership rates of all groups, particularly in the United States, with Filipinos and South Asians situated between these extremes. Most of these differences stem from disparities that exist at arrival, however, and not from differential advancement into homeownership.     

Immigrant unemployment: the Australian experience

"Between 1980 and 1996 both male and female immigrants experienced higher unemployment rates than Australia-born workers....A multivariate analysis is used in this article to examine unemployment rate differentials between Australia-born and immigrants from English-speaking countries and immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. A feature of the analysis is decomposition of unemployment rate differences between birthplace groups into a component attributable to the different characteristics of the birthplace groups (e.g. different mean levels of education) and a part that is viewed as an impact associated simply with being foreign born." (EXCERPT)     

Job displacement effects of Canadian immigrants by country of origin and occupation

"Some previous Canadian studies have shown that considering the labor market as a whole and also pooling all immigrants as a group, immigrants do not have any job displacement effects on the Canadian born. This study presents some new evidence. It disaggregates immigrants by country of origin and by occupation groups and provides an analysis of job displacement effects of immigrants on the native-born Canadians by these dimensions. The study finds that (1) U.S. immigrants and the Canadians are substitutes [for] competing groups in the labor market and the effect is quite significant; (2) Canadians and Europeans are competing groups in certain occupations, while they have complementary skills in others; and (3) immigrants from the Third World and the Canadians are slightly competing groups in certain occupations."     

English‐Language Proficiency among Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the United States, 1980–2000

This study assesses the determinants of English‐language proficiency among three subgroups of Israeli immigrants in the United States, namely native‐born Israeli Jews, foreign‐born Israeli Jews, and Palestinian Arabs, and how these determinants have changed over time. Multivariate analyses of decennial censuses from 1980, 1990, and 2000 reveal substantial differences in the directions and significance of the relationships between the independent variables and English proficiency of the subgroups under investigation. Ethnoreligious affiliation per se is seen to be an important factor that consistently explains intra‐group variation in English proficiency. This lends support to the split approach over the lump approach in attempting to understand immigrants’ linguistic dynamics in the new country. The findings are discussed in reference to three working hypotheses – “exposure,” “efficiency,” and “economic incentives” – and in the specific sociopolitical conditions of Jews and Arabs at both origin and destination.     

The demographic and socio-economic characteristics of post-1965 immigrants to New York City: a comparative analysis by national origin

This article analyses and compares the demographic and socio‐economic characteristics of persons born abroad who immigrated to New York City after 1965 and still lived in the City in 1990. Using data from the 1990 Census, we classify persons into the twenty four largest national origin groups and compare their demographic and socio‐economic characteristics (sex, age, educational attainment, labour force participation, unemployment, occupation, income, and poverty). We pose and answer three empirical questions. The first question is: what are some of the main differences by national origin in the composition of persons immigrating to New York City after 1965? The second question is: what are some of the main differences in the location of post‐1965 immigrants in New York's socio‐economic structure? The third question is: what are some of the main differences in the economic rewards received by persons who immigrated to New York City since 1965? We find that immigrants with less than a high school education have higher labour force participation rates than the US‐born population in the same educational category and also have slightly higher earnings. Immigrants with a high school degree have labour force participation rates close to (or slightly higher than) the average for the US‐born population but their incomes are slightly lower than the average income for the US‐born population. Immigrants with a college degree have participation rates similar or slightly lower that those of the US‐born population while their earnings are significantly lower that those of US‐born college graduates.