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Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in 15 Destination Countries (WP-25-11)

Leah Boustan, Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen, Ran Abramitzky, Elisa Jácome, and et al.

The researchers estimate intergenerational mobility of immigrants and their children in fifteen receiving countries. They document large income gaps for first-generation immigrants that diminish in the second generation. Around half of the second-generation gap can be explained by differences in parental income, with the remainder due to differential rates of absolute mobility. The daughters of immigrants enjoy higher absolute mobility than daughters of locals in most destinations, while immigrant sons primarily enjoy this advantage in countries with long histories of immigration. Cross-country differences in absolute mobility are not driven by parental country-of-origin, but instead by destination labor markets and immigration policy.

Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics, Princeton University

Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen, Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford

Ran Abramitzky, Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Economics, Stanford University

Elisa Jácome, Assistant Professor of Economics and IPR Fellow, Northwestern University

et al. (view study for all authors)

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