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CONCLUSION THEMES OF upward mobility and immigrant absorption are at the heart of American social history. This alone would be enough to spur inquiry as to whether the future absorption of immigrants and their offspring will be like its past. But in addition to this general curiosity, there are credible reasons to think that conditions have changed—economic conditions in the host society and the nonwhite origins of the new immigrants in particular. My approach to this question has focused on the low-skill immigrant worker, the Southern, Central, and Eastern Europeans (non-Jews) of 1890 to 1914, and the Mexicans of our own time. I compare the economic starting position of the immigrant generation, the schooling of their American-born children, and the economic outcomes of those American-born children when they reached adulthood. The starting position of the immigrant generation has been thought very much worse now. I argue that the data on which this conclusion rests were flawed and suggest new measures, which indicate that the starting positions of the SCEN and the Mexicans have not differed nearly as much as had been supposed. Still, the situation for the SCEN grew progressively better over time, because American wage inequality was declining over the first half of the twentieth century. By contrast, the situation for the Mexicans has been deteriorating because American wage inequality has been rising over the past three decades. At their most distant points (I explain the specifics below), the SCEN were earning about 63 to 72 percent of what native whites were earning and the Mexicans of 2000 earned about 51 percent of what native whites averaged that year. The greater contrast between past and present appears in the next generation . Mexican second-generation educational attainments lag further behind those of today’s native whites than the SCEN’s did behind those of yesterday’s native whites. And, while it is hard to be sure, it does seem that CONCLUSION the lag cannot be fully explained in terms of the differences observed in immigrant-generation wage differences. Finally, educational handicaps matter more for wages today than they mattered in the 1940s and 1950s, when the SCEN were lagging modestly in educational attainment. Today’s Mexican second generation, compared to yesterday’s SCEN, lags more in terms of years of schooling completed and pay more in terms of earnings for each of those years. Moreover, there is a fairly significant additional lag in Mexican earnings that does not seem to be related to levels of schooling. It could be due to any number of unmeasured or poorly measured factors, but discrimination is certainly one possible factor. All this places Mexican immigrants, and especially the Mexican second generation, as progressing, but progressing more slowly than the SCEN did in their time. It does seem reasonable to suggest, with two recent observers (Bean and Stevens 2003) that though grim views of eternal poverty seem off the mark, it may be that the Mexican second generation will move up more slowly than did the SCEN, perhaps taking four or five generations rather than three or four to reach parity with the native-white mainstream. Given this slower pace, the question of how the Mexican second generation today is faring compared to blacks of our own time is relevant. Mexican Americans are dropping out of high school at much higher rates than blacks, but in terms of other social behaviors that often lead into economic trouble, their rates are well below those of blacks (chapter 3). Earnings for full-time workers typically will not capture these problems; and so among such workers, men are faring about the same in both groups, and black women somewhat better (ignoring, in both cases, differences in schooling). Nevertheless, when whole families are taken into account it does appear that the Mexican second generation is in fact somewhat more favorably situated economically. I suspect that a modest exertion of social will would accomplish the most good by trying to boost high school graduation rates among the Mexican second generation (chapter 4). A fuller overview of findings follows. I argued that we do well to restrict the comparison of past and present not only in terms of immigrant peoples but also in terms of birth cohorts. Critical to the SCEN experience was a massive immigration in a relatively short time, followed by a suddenly imposed restriction. The result was little noticed but had profound results for the characteristics of the next generation . Most of those...

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