This paper reassesses the evidence on the assimilation and the changing labor market skills of immigrants to the United States. We find strong evidence of labor market assimilation for most immigrant groups. For Asian and Mexican immigrants the first ten years experience in the united States...

Whether immigrants advance in labor markets relative to natives as they gain experience is a fundamental question in the economics of immigration. For the US, it has been difficult to answer this question for the period when the immigration rate was at its historical peak, between the 1840s and...

This study examines the occupational mobility of antebellum immigrants as they entered the U.S. White collar, skilled, and semi-skilled immigrants left unskilled jobs more rapidly after arrival than farmers and unskilled workers. British and German immigrants fared better than the Irish;...

The repeated failure of Ireland's potato crop in the late 1840s led to a major famine and a surge in migration to the US. We build a dataset of Irish immigrants and their sons by linking males from 1850 to 1880 US census records. For comparison, we also link German and British immigrants, their...

This paper reexamines the empirical basisfor two "facts" which seem to be found in most cross-section studies of immigrant earnings: (1) the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the U.S.; and (2) this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the...

This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women's behavior in the United States--looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply...

Economists are often puzzled by the stronger public opposition to immigration than trade, since the two policies have similar effects on wages. Unlike trade, however, immigration can alter the composition of the local population, imposing potential externalities on natives. While previous...

This paper reviews the recent evidence on U.S. immigration, focusing on two key questions: (1) Does immigration reduce the labor market opportunities of less-skilled natives? (2) Have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 Immigration Reform Act successfully assimilated? Looking across major...