Developing New National Data on Social Mobility: A Workshop Summary by Amy Smith

Author:Amy Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2013-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

IMMIGRATION

The historically important role of immigration in U.S. demographic growth has increased substantially in recent years. Immigrant flows have intensified and changed, with a larger share of new immigrants coming from developing countries and arriving with very low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other skills. The U.S. context for those who are immigrants has shifted as well, including a labor market characterized by steep earnings inequality, with greater rewards to the education and skills that most immigrants lack. All these changes are subsequent to the last major survey of social mobility and require study.

Stephen J. Trejo of the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin explored many issues of immigration in his presentation, “Assessing the Socioeconomic Mobility and Integration of U.S. Immigrants and Their Descendants.” For the most part, Trejo observed, the same data and methods of analysis that are useful for studying social mobility in the native population are also useful for studying mobility in immigrants. Nonetheless, measuring mobility among the immigrant population and their descendants presents some unique challenges.

Intragenerational Mobility: First Generation

Trejo first addressed the social mobility of the immigrants themselves. This includes tracing their assimilation and integration in the United States and comparing their outcomes with their own, siblings’, or peers’ experience in the country of origin. Relevant outcomes include income, earnings, employment, occupational attainment, education, and language proficiency. Suitable timeframes for measuring include just after the immigrant arrives and then at intervals over the course of the post-arrival life.

Regarding intragenerational mobility, Trejo declared, “We know a lot about this. We have actually pretty good data.” Data sources well-suited for studying the U.S. experiences of immigrants include the Current Population Survey (CPS), American Community Survey (ACS), and SIPP. These surveys provide information on immigrants’ country of origin, time of arrival in the United States, and, to some extent via either synthetic cohorts or longitudinal data, ultimate outcomes. These datasets can also be matched with administrative data, such as SSA earnings records, to examine immigrant integration. Trejo noted that more information would be helpful, particularly further detail about initial and ongoing immigration status, refugee status, and legal status. This is especially so because much immigration to the United States is undocumented, and legal status may impact assimilation and integration. Thus, while much is known about immigrants’ intragenerational mobility, Trejo concluded that “there are ways we could improve on the data we currently collect in the CPS or the ACS.”

Intergenerational Mobility: The Second Generation

Trejo then turned to issues of intergenerational mobility, from the first to the second generation, or from immigrants themselves to their children. Historically, much of the mobility achieved by immigrant families has occurred across rather than within generations. Earlier waves of unskilled migrants in the late 19th century and early 20th century enjoyed substantial progress, enabling their descendants to join the economic mainstream within two or three generations. Trejo noted the considerable skepticism regarding whether this pattern of assimilation and adaptation will operate similarly for more recent immigrants and their descendants.

Trejo first

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