Two economists — Ran Abramitzky of Stanford and Leah Boustan of Princeton — embarked on an ambitious project more than a decade ago. They wanted to know how the trajectory of immigrants to the United States had changed since the 1800s. To do so, Abramitzky and Boustan collected millions of tax filings, census records and other data and analyzed upward mobility over time.
Their findings, published in a 2022 book titled “Streets of Gold,” received widespread attention. The data showed that recent immigrant families had climbed the country’s ladder at a strikingly similar pace to immigrant families from long ago, even as the profile of those immigrants has changed. “The American dream is just as real for immigrants from Asia and Latin America now as it was for immigrants from Italy and Russia 100 years ago,” Abramitzky and Boustan wrote.
As in the past, immigrants themselves tend to remain poor if they arrive poor, as many do. But as in the past, their children usually make up ground rapidly, regardless of where they come from. Within a generation or two, immigrant families resemble native families in economic terms. (See graphics that explain the research.)
The findings were surprising partly because the American economy has been so disappointing over the past few decades. Overall upward mobility has declined sharply. Immigrants and their descendants, however, have been a glorious exception. For a mix of reasons — including their willingness to move to U.S. regions with strong economies — immigrant families have kept climbing society’s ladder.
This encouraging pattern obviously challenges the dark view of recent immigrants that conservatives sometimes offer. Yet it also challenges one part of the liberal consensus — about affirmative action.
Until the Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action last year, many beneficiaries were descendants of recent immigrants, from Latin America, Africa and elsewhere. But if immigrant families are making progress more than the average American family, did they need affirmative action? And now that the old policy is gone, which groups of Americans are truly vulnerable?