El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II.

We present new estimates of the outcomes of first-generation Mexicans and their descendants between 1880 and 1940. We find zero convergence of the economic gap between Mexicans and non-Mexican whites across three generations. The great-grandchildren of immigrants also had fewer years of education. S...

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Published in:Journal of Economic History Vol. 80; no. 4; pp. 961 - 996
Main Authors: Kosack, Edward, Ward, Zachary
Format: Article
Published: Cambridge University Press Dec2020
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Dec2020
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        atl: El Sueño Americano? The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II.
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          Kosack, Edward
          Ward, Zachary
        affil:
          Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Williams College of Business, Xavier University, ML 1212, 3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45207..
          Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, One Bear Place 98001, Waco, TX 76798..
      su:
        Mexican Americans -- Social conditions
        Development gap
        History of economic development
      sug:
        subj:
          Mexican Americans -- Social conditions
          Development gap
          History of economic development
      ab: We present new estimates of the outcomes of first-generation Mexicans and their descendants between 1880 and 1940. We find zero convergence of the economic gap between Mexicans and non-Mexican whites across three generations. The great-grandchildren of immigrants also had fewer years of education. Slow convergence is not simply due to an inheritance of poverty; rather, Mexican Americans had worse outcomes conditional on the father's economic status. However, the gap between third-generation Mexican Americans and non-Mexican whites is about half the size today as it was in 1940, suggesting that barriers to Mexican American progress have significantly decreased over time.
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    language: English
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