:: Levy Economics Institute of Bard College ::

Immigration, Ethnicity, and Social Structure

This program is led by Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann, who guides a research initiative, “Ethnicity and Economy in America—Past and Present,” that focuses on the processes by which immigrants and their descendants are assimilated into U.S. economic life. The Levy Institute believes that this work will shed light on current policy issues related to immigration, such as international competitiveness, the labor market, income distribution, and poverty.

The program comprises three research projects. The first, “The Jews circa 1900: Social Structure in Europe and America,” focuses on social characteristics that help to explain the rapid socioeconomic rise of eastern European Jewish immigrants who entered the American economy at the turn of the 20th century. Census data that were previously unavailable or not machine readable are used to examine social and economic characteristics of eastern European Jews who emigrated to the United States, as well as those who remained in Europe.

The second project, “Assimilation and the Third Generation,” explores the assimilation of immigrants into the socioeconomic mainstream of the United States, and the social and economic experiences of their American-born children. Special attention is paid to a few large groups whose absorption seemed especially slow and painful during the first and second generations: Irish immigrants who arrived in the mid 19th century, Italians and Poles who immigrated between 1880 and 1920, Mexicans who arrived throughout much of the 20th century, and southern-born blacks who migrated north. Census data are used in new ways in order to identify and trace second- and third-generation Americans.

The third project, “The New Immigration’s Second Generation,” conducted by Perlmann and Research Associate Roger Waldinger, reviews literature that deals with the economic progress and difficulties faced by children of today’s immigrants (i.e., at the turn of the 21st century). Their experiences are compared with those faced by children of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century.

Research Group: Joel Perlmann, Yuval Elmelech, Roger Waldinger

Program Publications
Working Papers \| December 2007 American Jewish Opinion about the Future of the West Bank American Jewish opinion about the Arab-Israel conflict matters for both American and Israeli politics as well as for American Jewish life. This paper undertakes an analysis of that opinion based on American Jewish Committee (AJC) annual polls. [more] Working Paper No. 526
Working Papers \| July 2007 The American Jewish Committee’s Annual Opinion Surveys The American Jewish Committee (AJC) surveys of Jewish opinion are unique both in being conducted annually and in the subject matter covered. This paper assesses the quality of these samples. [more] Working Paper No. 508
Working Papers \| July 2007 Who’s a Jew in an Era of High Intermarriage? The old ways in which surveys of Jews handled marginal cases no longer make sense, and the number of cases involved is no longer small. I examine in detail the public-use samples of the two recent national surveys of Americans of recent Jewish origin—the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) and the American Jewish Identity Survey (AJIS)—and also explore the implications for the American Jewish Committee annual surveys of Jewish political opinion. [more] Working Paper No. 507
Working Papers \| May 2007 Two National Surveys of American Jews, 2000–01 While there have been very few national surveys of American Jews, two that we do have are from the same period, 2000–01. They were conducted by different researchers using different sampling methods. [more] Working Paper No. 501
Working Papers \| May 2007 Surveying American Jews and Their Views on Middle East Politics This working paper takes up three related themes. In section 1, I briefly describe the issues relevant to surveying American Jews and highlight the importance of authoritative national surveys; in section 2, I note that these surveys have not included much exploration of American Jewish divisions over Israeli and American Middle East policy. [more] Working Paper No. 497
Working Papers \| August 2006 The American Jewish Periphery This paper calls attention to the American Jewish periphery—Americans of recent Jewish origin who have only the most tenuous connections, if any, with those origins. This periphery has been growing to the point that there are now, for example, nearly a million Americans with recent Jewish origins (origins no farther back in time than the nuclear family in which they were raised) who report that they are Christians. [more] Working Paper No. 473
Working Papers \| August 2006 The Local Geographic Origins of Russian-Jewish Immigrants, circa 1900 This working paper concerns the local origins of Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, circa 1900. New evidence is drawn from a large random sample of Russian-Jewish immigrant arrivals in the United States. [more] Working Paper No. 465
Working Papers \| July 2006 Dissent and Discipline in Ben Gurion's Labor Party, 1930–32 This paper describes a small opposition group that functioned during 1930–33 on the left fringes of Ben Gurion's Mapai party in Palestine. Mapai dominated Jewish Palestine's politics, and later the politics of the young State of Israel; it lives on today in Israel's Labor Party. [more] Working Paper No. 458
Book Series \| December 2005 Italians Then, Mexicans Now According to the American dream, hard work and a good education can lift people from poverty to success in the “land of opportunity.” The unskilled immigrants who came to the United States from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely realized that vision. [more] Book Series, December 2005
Working Papers \| January 2005 Determinants of Minority–White Differentials in Child Poverty This paper uses data from the 1993–2001 March Current Population Survey to estimate the extent to which child living arrangements, parental work patterns, and immigration attributes shape racial and ethnic variation in child poverty. Results from multivariate analyses and a standardization technique reveal that parental work patterns as well as child living arrangements are especially consequential for black and Puerto-Rican economic circumstances. [more] Working Paper No. 417
Working Papers \| April 2003 Mexicans Now, Italians Then This working paper continues earlier efforts to compare the experiences of today's second-generation Mexican Americans with those of second-generation members of major immigrant groups of a century ago. Here the focus is on intermarriage. [more] Working Paper No. 376
Working Papers \| July 2002 Polish and Italian Schooling Then, Mexican Schooling Now? This paper relies on data from the census and the Current Population Survey (CPS) to compare levels of education attained by second-generation young people from important immigrant groups during the last great wave of immigration and by second-generation Mexican Americans today. In addition, it provides evidence, based on the CPS, about the earnings relative to level of schooling of the Mexican American second generation today. [more] Working Paper No. 350
Working Papers \| February 2002 Poles and Italians then, Mexicans Now? A good deal of recent discussion among social scientists concerned with immigration is about the disadvantages faced by immigrants who enter the American labor force with much-lower levels of skills than those possessed by the typical native white worker. Among contemporary immigrant groups, by far the most important example is the Mexicans. [more] Working Paper No. 343
Working Papers \| August 2001 Young Mexican Americans, Blacks, and Whites in Recent Years This paper stresses that the key to concerns about the progress of second-generation Americans is the fate of the Mexican second generation. It compares several indicators of the advances of second-generation Mexicans to those of non-Hispanic, native-born blacks and non-Hispanic, native-born white attainments. [more] Working Paper No. 335
Working Papers \| June 2001 Toward a Population History of the Second Generation Past-present comparisons of second-generation progress are often plagued by vague references to the baseline, the past. This essay seeks to contribute some specificity to the understanding of second generations past for the sake of comparison and as a contribution to historical understanding in its own right. [more] Working Paper No. 333
Working Papers \| May 2001 Reporting of Two or More Races in the 1999 American Community Survey This study presents data on race, collected at selected sites throughout the country for the 1999 American Community Survey (ACS). In particular, the distribution of the population by race and Hispanic or Latino origin is examined, as are the reporting of multiple races, number of races, and major race combinations and the extent to which the race and Hispanic/Latino questions were not answered. [more] Working Paper No. 329
Working Papers \| January 2001 "Race or People" In 1898, the United States Bureau of Immigration initiated a classification of immigrants into some 40 categories of "race or people." Nearly all the categories covered Europeans. [more] Working Paper No. 320
Working Papers \| August 2000 Demographic Outcomes of Ethnic Intermarriage in American History This paper presents a new approach to measuring the extent of intermarriage among Americans of different ethnic origins. Using Census Bureau microdata and CPS data, measurements of the rates of Italian-American intermarriages across four generations are made to demonstrate that these rates were not merely high following the immigrant generation, but that even low estimates of intermarriage rates will produce high proportions of descendants of mixed origin. [more] Working Paper No. 312
Working Papers \| July 1998 The Place of Cultural Explanations and Historical Specificity in Discussions of Modes of Incorporation and Segmented Assimilation In this new working paper, Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann discusses cultural, structural, and contextual explanations of segmented assimilation among the children of immigrants. In it he addresses a number of questions about modes of incorporation as an explanation for ethnic differences in behavior—what, for example, is the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior if ethnic behavior is approached from a modes-of-incorporation perspective? The author asks this question both in connection with individuals of the immigrant generation and in connection with the second generation; the concern with the second generation leads him to consider the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior in connection with the related conception of segmented assimilation. [more] Working Paper No. 240
Working Papers \| November 1997 Achievement and Ambition among Children of Immigrants in Southern California The influx of immigrants to the United States after 1965 has reached levels not seen since the early part of the century. The ability of these recent immigrant groups and their children to succeed in the American economy has been hotly debated but, until recently, little studied. [more] Working Paper No. 215
Working Papers \| November 1997 The School-to-Work Transition of Second-generation Immigrants in Metropolitan New York Social scientists have only begun to study the experiences of the 15 million immigrants who have settled in the United States since 1965 and have learned even less about their children. Several speculate that the children of immigrants, being restricted to poor inner city schools, bad jobs, and shrinking economic niches, will experience downward mobility, or second-generation decline. [more] Working Paper No. 214
Public Policy Briefs \| October 1997 Reflecting the Changing Face of America On the United States' census form, American citizens are told they may list any ethnic ancestries with which they identify, but are instructed to “mark one only” in the question on race. Joel Perlmann asserts that it is in the public interest to allow people to declare themselves as having origins in more than one race. [more] Public Policy Brief No. 35, 1997
Public Policy Brief Highlights \| October 1997 Reflecting the Changing Face of America On the United States' census form, American citizens are told they may list any ethnic ancestries with which they identify, but are instructed to “mark one only” in the question on race. Joel Perlmann asserts that it is in the public interest to allow people to declare themselves as having origins in more than one race. [more] Public Policy Brief Highlights No. 35A, 1997
Working Papers \| August 1997 Second Generations This paper takes a doubting, though friendly, look at the hypotheses of “second generation deciine” and “segmented assimiiation” that have framed the emerging research agenda on the new second generation. Research Associate Roger Waldinger, of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann begin with a review of the basic approach, outlining the logic of argument, and specifying the central contentions. [more] Working Paper No. 200
Working Papers \| June 1997 "Multiracials," Racial Classification, and American Intermarriage—The Public's Interest How the census of 2000 is to count "multiracial" people is a hot topic in Washington. A federal task force presented a draft of its recommendations in July, and the Office of Management and Budget, after hearing reactions, will make a final ruling in late October. [more] Working Paper No. 195
Working Papers \| December 1996 Literacy among the Jews of Russia in 1897 Researchers exploring Jewish literacy have traditionally ignored the Russian Census of 1897 on the grounds that it underreported Jewish literacy. Most have felt that the low literacy percentage reported for Jews could not possibly be accurate and therefore scholars have ignored the value of the Census as a research tool. [more] Working Paper No. 182
Working Papers \| December 1996 Which Immigrant Occupational Skills? Researchers have long sought explanations for the success of Jews who migrated to the United States at the turn of the century in attaining middle-class status. East European Jews arrived in the United States at the same time as many other ethnic groups between 1880 and 1920, yet achieved economic success far faster. [more] Working Paper No. 181
Working Papers \| December 1996 The Utilization of Human Capital in the U.S., 1975–1992 The experience that comes with age and the productive capacity of youth are both assets widely underused in the American labor market, according to Research Associate Robert Haveman and co-authors Lawrence Buron and Andrew Bershadker of the University of Wisconsin. To measure the use of American labor, the authors developed an indicator called the capacity utilization rate (CUR). [more] Working Paper No. 180
Working Papers \| October 1996 Selective Migration As a Basis for Upward Mobility? The upward mobility of Jews who migrated to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century has been explained as a function of premigrational cultural characteristics (such as a tradition of learning) or premigrational structural attributes (skills in certain industries and occupations that could be applied in the new country). In this working paper, Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann does not discount either of these explanations, but suggests that more attention should be paid to the rapid rate of entry of Jews into trade. [more] Working Paper No. 172
Public Policy Briefs \| June 1993 Immigration Policy: A Tool of Labor Economics? Vernon M. Briggs argues that, while mass immigration in the past was consistent with then-existing labor market needs, today it is incompatible with the nation's economic development trends and labor force requirements. [more] Public Policy Brief No. 7, 1993