Social Mobility among African Immigrants in the U.S.

What is it about?

This paper uses measures of poverty and affluence to compare the fates of African Immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in 1990 to those of U.S. born adult children of African immigrants in the present day. It appears that the latter group is faring better than the former. In other words, there is more affluence and less poverty among members of the African second generation than there was among African immigrants 20 years earlier. Ethiopian men are a noteworthy exception--they evidence a troubling pattern of downward mobility.

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Why is it important?

This paper is important in that African immigrants are among the fastest growing groups in the U.S. and there is no sign that African immigration will slow anytime soon. It is also important because African immigrants are racially diverse which allows us to gauge the relative effects of race and national origins on life chances in the U.S. In this paper it is shown that knowing an immigrant's racial identity is equally if not more important as knowing what specific country she (or her parents) is from when speculating about her socioeconomic trajectory.