
Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born - harias
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26408
======
maerF0x0
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 Canadians that sufficiently didnt fit into Canadian culture, or
found something immanently attractive about US life (at least the perception
of US life)...

So this study is kind of saying "The children of ambitious and effortful
parents have higher rates of upward mobility than the general populace of US
people"

~~~
nostrademons
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, and biased
against people who are likely to be a drain on public assistance. That means
that most hyphenated-Americans have already passed two significant high-pass
filters: they have to be willing to uproot their whole life to leave, and they
have to bring enough to the table to convince U.S. immigration to let them in.

~~~
namirez
> _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...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/17/key-facts-about-
u-s-immigration-policies-and-proposed-changes/)

~~~
nostrademons
You take an initial immigrant who gets in because of the merit categories and
then have them bring over all their family members, whose gene pool ends up in
the U.S? Whose family values?

This article is about upward mobility in the children of immigrants. What
traits do children get from their parents? Most people would say it's nature
(their genes) and nurture (their upbringing). All of these are widely shared
with the family members of the initial immigrant, so most immigration being
family-based does not invalidate this conclusion.

~~~
godelski
As far as I'm aware, there's no strong link between motivation and generics.

~~~
namirez
Or as Vincent said in Gattaca: "There is no gene for the human spirit."

~~~
aaronblohowiak
it is a whole constellation of genetic, epi-genetic, environmental factors,
and experiences in concert. to say that there is no genetic predisposition for
behavior is... not confirmed by the science.

------
rayiner
It's particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian
americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category:
[http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/assets/documents/race...](http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_paper.pdf).

If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the
probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent
is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probability one
would except of there was zero correlation between child and parent incomes).
For Asian Americans its almost 27%. A white child born in the bottom quantile
is about 2.5 times more likely to _stay_ in the bottom quantile (28%) than to
rise to the top quantile (12%). An asian child born in the bottom quantile is
about 1.5 times more likely to _rise_ to the top quantile (27%) than to stay
in the bottom quantile (12%).

~~~
bsanr2
Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised
by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don't exclude
African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies
have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the
lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a
whole.

All of this seems to suggest that there is something about the American
education system - and perhaps our overal culture - that is failing our
children, and our black children in particular.

This also makes me wonder if there's data about the mobility of native vs
immigrant blacks. If it's similar, it would align with other data that show
that degree attainment only serves to partially overcome the barriers to
upward mobility placed in the way of black workers.

I'm of the opinion that many of the impediments that punish or withhold
assistance from minorities often bleed over into mainstream American life. The
specific drum I'll keep beating is that if, perhaps, the infrastructure to
battle the crack/cocaine epidemic as a public health issue had been allowed to
be built to a robust state, the opioid epidemic would not have become so dire.
The apathy towards these issues, even as they encroach upon "mainstream"
middle class life, must be part of the mechanics of the calcification of class
in America.

~~~
rhacker
Indeed. While you're covering multiple topics, I wanted to touch on the
education specifically.

I think a huge reason for our problematic education system is lack of
competition for teaching jobs. If there's a job at a startup that's willing to
pay someone for math at $100k (avg in mixed locations) - $300k (avg in silicon
valley) how are we ever going to have excellent math teachers. The people
competing for a 50k teaching job are not even qualified to have that 100-300k
job.

Beyond that the US education system, and the EPA works this way too, is that
as we find the numbers don't add up to what we want, we lower the standards
until we're at a point we think we can achieve some goal.

If they simply made standards that were wwaaaay higher, they would be forced
to realize everything is underfunded.

~~~
tropo
If education in the USA is underfunded, then education is underfunded in
pretty much every country. The USA pays more per student than Japan, Sweden,
Germany, and Korea. Look:

[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp)

So that isn't the problem, at least relative to the rest of the world.

The worst schools in the USA seem to spend the most. Maybe the money is anti-
educational, being used to purchase distractions. DC is spending well over
$30,000 per student. At that rate, DC could easily pay 300k for a teacher. It
would only require the funds from 1/3 of the class.

~~~
jdkee
The countries you cite are all relatively homogenous. The U.S. has greater
disparities in education funding due to funding coming primarily from local
sources rather than national.

~~~
tropo
Sweden and Germany are no longer homogeneous at all, and anyway isn't
diversity supposed to be a strength?

The specific example I gave, DC, simply destroys the argument that local
funding is the problem. DC is very well-funded from national sources, and it
has horrific schools.

------
blakesterz
This reminds of a line from 30 Rock by Jack Donaghy:

"Diversity is the engine that drives this country. We are an immigrant nation!
The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next
generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation...
snowboards and takes improv classes."

Feels like one of those things that we all thought was true.

~~~
rayiner
John Adams said something similar, though he meant it in the opposite way: "I
must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation,
commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study
painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

Relatedly, Michael Hopf: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good
times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."

~~~
oblio
How do you define weak and strong, though?

~~~
dx87
I think of it as resiliance to adversity. If someone has had a comparatively
easy life, they'll probably have a harder time dealing with difficult
situations. The problem is that everything is relative, so people may not see
their life as easy, even if it is compared to most people. For example, I used
to work with someone who was raised by wealthy parents, went to super
exclusive private schools, and had multiple college degrees paid for by their
parents. They didn't think they had an easy life though, because their parents
only had a couple million dollars in the bank, and his classmates were mostly
old money with 10s or 100s of millions in the bank, so they wouldn't hang out
with him because he was "poor".

The good thing is that resliance is like a muscle and can be strengthened,
people just need to leave their comfort zone occasionally.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_people just need to leave their comfort zone occasionally_

It would be nice if that happened, though. You tell your students, 75 % of
whom have no grasp of 8th-grade math, that they have been cheated out of an
education and that consequently they now need to work twice as hard. But
instead of knuckling down they all march off to the Dean to complain. Of
course the Dean enables the underperformance.

You can't frame "easy life" only in terms of money, "easy life" also means
coasting through an underperforming school and never having to face reality.

~~~
acephal
Analytics driven education is the worst thing to happen to education.

------
kazinator
This is because people who immigrate are "artificially" pushed down in social
status and income due to issues like differences in language, and not having
some of your work or education experience recognized in the foreign country.
These people are just "bouncing back". In some cases people who were
professionals in their country of origin do relatively lower ranked or even
menial work. Their children will be constantly reminded "I was a dentist back
home, not a hygienist", which affects their self-image.

Back in their home country, people who are _actually_ from a poorer class do
not experience the same upward mobility.

That is all the more so in places that have caste or caste-like systems. Who
your great-great-grandfather was still influences where you stand.

~~~
heavyarms
That was my first take as well. This is explicitly called out in the
Conclusions section in paper.

"Furthermore, immigrant parents were “under-placed” in the income
distribution, thus allowing their children who were native English speakers
and educated in the US more scope for upward mobility."

I don't see numbers on how much of the total "upward mobility" can be
attributed to any of the individual factors.

~~~
kazinator
The thing is, it's not just about income. If you come from generations of
poverty, it's written all over you, and that closes doors in your face.

The children of upward mobile immigrants who don't come from lower classes in
their home country reflect that, even if the parents struggle in the new
country.

They are socialized differently from true poor people.

For instance, language: the children will tend to pick up the "socio-
economically preferred dialect"¹ of English, rather than a socially
stigmatized dialect. The children will do this naturally, because they will
tune in to how the way people speak English in America determines the
perception of social class, and then they will learn that way of speaking
which fits their self-image about where they fit in society.

\---

1\. A phrase I picked up years ago from a linguistics prof.

------
vparikh
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 school
education. My father eventually ended up in a top research company and my
mother got a masters in computer science from the local state university. This
example ingrained the merits of grit and hard work

3\. Education - specifically math and science - were emphasized in my family
over sports, social and other activities. This was very different then my
friends.

4\. Academic expectations were extremely high - in my family strait As was
baseline.

5\. Family and community support - we had strong support from other immigrant
indian community growing up. And the community as a whole valued the same
things as my family.

These traits can be replicated in non immigrant American society - but often
it is not. The main difference I see is a lack of a strong family unit and
acceptance of low academic standards.

This could be just my experience - would be interested in hearing others

~~~
jdmg94
If you're born into America to Immigrant parents, doesn't that make you a
second generation immigrant?

~~~
vparikh
I should have clarified - I was 4 and my sister was 2 when my parents
immigrated.

------
dragonwriter
Immigrants are frequently working below what you'd expect of similarly
talented/skilled/educated (especially if you exclude consideration of English
language fluency) native born, so it's not really surprising that their
children do better by comparison to them than the children of the native born.

~~~
bluGill
Immigrants have left everything they know behind. They know they don't really
know their way around, so they are raising their kids to be better than they
were.

I know factory workers raising their kids to be a factory working running some
machine on an assembly line. It never occurs to them to encourage their kids
to be something. They know that their their own factory had 10 times as many
factory workers just 30 years ago but not even that is enough for them to
think they need to start thinking of getting their family to do something
else.

~~~
yibg
Maybe it’s contentment. They’ve had a good life being a factory worker (or
replace with any other formerly good earning but now dying job). Had the house
and 2 cars and raised a family on the work, so why change things now. I know
intellectually yes you can say this industry is dying and the wages are going
down, but it’s probably not as emotionally connected a thought process.

Most immigrants never had that luxury. They came with no credentials and
worked low wage jobs at or below the poverty line. They want to get out of
that situation and maybe more importantly want their children to get out of
that situation.

------
aluminussoma
The education entrepreneur Adam Robinson did his own survey a few decades ago.
He found that while children of two immigrants did better on standardized
tests than children of two non-immigrant parents, the "best" combination came
from having an immigrant father and a non-immigrant mother. ("Best" when
focusing solely on standardized test results)

~~~
yourapostasy
That's curiously specific, as in the gender role and immigrant standing are
tied together, but apparently that isn't the case. Googling around found the
following editorialization of the source material [1] that gave a TL;DR faster
than I can type it up:

Study of NYC school data and using custom questionnaires of teens across the
world testing into Stuyvesant HS Cutting to the conclusion: Groups that
overcame socioeconomic factors to improve on tests (test improvement is more
sensitive to those factors than outright performance) had the following
factors: immigrant father US-born mother Speculation to why this mattered? One
parent to impart work ethic, one parent to impart language. The gender didn’t
matter, it just turned out that the father typically tended to be the
immigrant. This combo even outperformed both parents being born in the US.

[1] [https://fs.blog/adam-robinson-pt1/](https://fs.blog/adam-robinson-pt1/)

~~~
wutbrodo
> One parent to impart work ethic, one parent to impart language.

This at least passes the sniff test. I know plenty of 1.5 or 2nd Gen Indian
Americans who seamlessly assimilate because they and/or their parents speak
English, in an accent coded as classy (ie British-sounding)[1]. This is even
true to some degree in the workplace: I work with some brilliant first gen
Chinese immigrants, but there's a practical ceiling on their ability to work
at higher levels because of the increasing importance of communication as you
rise,and the way their thick accents and lack of vocabulary interact with
that. A hypothetical kid of theirs with the same level of talent would shoot
up the ranks.

[1] Note that this doesnt cover all Indian accents, only most traditionally
upper-class ones.

------
ajuc
That's because immigrants often have artificially lowered status compared to
what they had in their home country. They might have been white collar workers
there but they have to work worst jobs in US because of language and other
barriers.

They still have high expectations for their kids and support them like better-
off parents would, so when kids enter the job market with no language barrier
- they return to their usual place.

~~~
dannyperson
This makes sense - my grandfather was a top lawyer in his home country before
fleeing a war. As a refugee in a foreign country, he did manage to get a law
position with some connections he had - but his XX years of foreign law
experience weren't very useful in the new country.

------
chrisbennet
I suspect that parents who "achieve" by coming to the U.S. are more likely to
have children of the same persuasion.

~~~
bigbadgoose
People with enough gumption to upend their lives and leave everything they
knew behind for an uncertain future … it's the "right stuff"

~~~
vincent-toups
Is it the "right stuff"? One might just as plausibly expect such people to be
highly risk tolerant and to end up screwing up really badly as often as they
succeed.

~~~
leftyted
I'd expect them to screw up much more often than they succeed. But if 25
people take a risk and found a company and 1 of them succeeds, that one
company might employ 1000 people. The 24 failures may be worth it. That's
leaving aside whatever useful services the company provides.

~20% of the world population of foreign-born people lives in the US. It's
difficult to think that's unrelated to the fact that the US produces a
disproportionate amount of global innovation.

------
harias
Title editorialized from "Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the US
over Two Centuries"

Abstract:

>Using millions of father-son pairs spanning more than 100 years of US
history, we find that children of immigrants from nearly every sending country
have higher rates of upward mobility than children of the US-born. Immigrants’
advantage is similar historically and today despite dramatic shifts in sending
countries and US immigration policy. In the past, this advantage can be
explained by immigrants moving to areas with better prospects for their
children and by “under-placement” of the first generation in the income
distribution. These findings are consistent with the “American Dream” view
that even poorer immigrants can improve their children’s prospects.

~~~
jvanderbot
So, the American Dream as upward mobility for established citizens was never
true?

~~~
czbond
I read this more as it can be easier to move from really dire straits 3rd
world country to middle class America. Whereas it can be harder to go from
middle class America to Upper class.

3rd World -> Middle Class America takes hard work (once you're in America)
Middle Class America -> Upper Class takes strategic, risk, and hard work

~~~
jvanderbot
Adding: I think there is some selection bias. Those who self-select to move to
the US probably already have motivation, means, etc to _get_ to the US and the
intelligence to manage the complicated immigration process. Then, there's the
"burn the ships" part, where you simply _must_ succeed because there's no
option of leaving.

------
ipnon
How much of this is attributable to immigrants clustering in highly productive
urban areas?

~~~
wweiss1230
Quoting the study "Geographic choices were important: first-generation
immigrants were more likely to settle in areas with higher mobility prospects
for their children. When we compare children growing up in the same US region,
the intergenerational gap between immigrants and the US-born is reduced by
70%. When comparing children growing up in the same county, we no longer find
an intergenerational gap between the children of immigrants and US-born
individuals. In other words, immigrant children did not earn more than others
who grew up in the same location. Rather, their parents chose to live in
locations that offered high mobility prospects to all."

------
908B64B197
Is this really a surprise?

There's so much more to capital than assets! While often asset-poor, a lot of
immigrants to the west have considerable intellectual capital and good social
capital among their community. Even when foreign diplomas are judged
worthless, the fact that the individual was able to acquire them in his
country still probably places him in the top percentile of his home nation.
And the immigrant community often serves as a pipeline for employment, no
matter what the skill level.

Even if two third (that's the number claimed) came through family migration,
it doesn't really matter as the first person that's sponsoring them had to get
selected in the first place through employment. Even if the initial sponsor
went to some diversity lottery, I suppose applying and meeting all
requirements still requires a little bit of education and some financial
resources to send the application in the first place.

I would be curious to see the breakdown per initial immigration category and
country, with folks coming in from family based immigration counted as the
category of the initial sponsor.

------
WiPo
Given how strict the immigration rule has become I'm not surprised, especially
for those who work in tech/academics. Also UPWARD is relative, which means
many immigrants start from scratch and there's just not enough time to gain
too much wealth and social status, thus makes it easier for their children to
go 'upwards', while it may just be their children are living like average
Americans.

------
freepor
That’s because (legal) immigrants have high social capital (education, values,
two parent households) and often migrate to places where they have the highest
relationship capital (hence the CountryVille neighborhoods like Koreatown or
the Ukrainian neighborhood on the East side of Manhattan). So when you measure
their kids income it jumps up on average.

------
rossdavidh
While this is good to see verified, and I absolutely think it is important to
rigorously double-check whether things that "make sense" are actually true, it
would have been really surprising if this were not true. 1) immigrants often
have language difficulties that their children do not 2) immigrants often have
cultural knowledge difficulties that their children do not 3) immigrants often
have moved to places (both country and place within country) for the exact
reason that they believe their children will do better there

But, again, just because it was predictable doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea
to have rigorously verified that it is so.

------
nova22033
Is it because they have fewer ties to the place where they grew up and they're
more willing to move to a new city to make more money?

------
blululu
This seems like a variation on regression to the mean. If you take a group of
people who have had unusually bad circumstances (language + cultural barriers)
and compare with a similar group (their children) odds are that things will
improve on the next iteration (assuming that the bad circumstances are
transient and not endemic).

------
PaulHoule
The "ain't no making it" attitude that has been historically attributed to
poor blacks is increasingly popular among "native" whites.

~~~
acephal
Except they don't say "ain't no making it", they say "life is about the
experiences not making money". I've heard 35-year olds say this.

------
known
Like father, not like son [https://archive.vn/YIjwk](https://archive.vn/YIjwk)

------
trekrich
positive discrimination

------
slumdev
Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes in Outliers that children whose parents' efforts
are rewarded are more likely to work hard themselves because their brains are
wired from a young age to associate work with reward.

Immigrating to the United States, for a lot of people, is a great reward.

------
throwaway_tech
A lot of the comments are crediting the immigrant parents as being "motivated"
parents...maybe, but in this modern economy I think there is a more economic
reason:

US born children have parents that more likely than not are indebted; whereas,
even poor immigrants are unlikely to be indebted. It likely follows children
whose parents not in debt, no matter how poor, likely have higher rates of
upward mobility than children of indebted parents. There are very real glass
ceilings in the US (having the lowest socio-economic mobility of all 1st world
countries), so you are likely to raise from below the poverty line to just
above, but if you are already above their isn't much likelihood of going up
further.

