Immigration, Assimilation, and Intergenerational Mobility, Featuring Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan

Immigration has once again taken center stage in the United States. While the federal government’s crackdown continues to unfold, the ideas driving immigration politics are far from new. Concerns about economic competition and cultural assimilation would have been familiar to Americans a century ago. Yet research from our guests demonstrates that many of the commonly held beliefs about immigrants are, in fact, largely myths.

Economists Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan are the authors of Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success. They are responsible for groundbreaking work in the study of economic history, finding inventive ways to harness both qualitative and quantitative methods. In this conversation with host Steven Durlauf, they discuss misconceptions about the economics of immigration, the persistence of upward mobility among the children of immigrants, and what those children’s names might tell us about cultural assimilation.

This conversation was recorded in October.