@techreport{NBERw18011, title = "A Nation of Immigrants: Assimilation and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration", author = "Ran Abramitzky and Leah Platt Boustan and Katherine Eriksson", institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research", type = "Working Paper", series = "Working Paper Series", number = "18011", year = "2012", month = "April", URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w18011", abstract = {During the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), the US maintained an open border, absorbing 30 million European immigrants. Prior cross-sectional work on this era finds that immigrants initially held lower-paid occupations than natives but experienced rapid convergence over time. In newly-assembled panel data, we show that, in fact, the average immigrant did not face a substantial occupation-based earnings penalty upon first arrival and experienced occupational advancement at the same rate as natives. Cross-sectional patterns are driven by biases from declining arrival cohort quality and departures of negatively-selected return migrants. We show that assimilation patterns vary substantially across sending countries and persist in the second generation.}, }