In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an "open borders" United States absorbed millions of European immigrants in one of the largest mass migrations ever. New research by Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky challenges the perception that immigrants lagged behind native-born Americans in job pay and career growth.
 

BY CLIFTON B. PARKER

European immigrants to America during the country's largest migration wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had earnings comparable to native-born Americans, contrary to the popular perception, according to new Stanford research.

"Our paper challenges conventional wisdom and prior research about immigrant assimilation during this period," said Ran Abramitzky, an associate professor of economics at Stanford, faculty affiliate of The Europe Center and author of the research paper in the Journal of Political Economy.

New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration. Photo Credit: Lewis Hine/Library of Congress

New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration.

Abramitzky and his colleagues found the average immigrant in that period did not face a substantial "earnings penalty" – lower pay than native-born workers – upon their arrival.

"The initial earnings penalty is overstated," said Abramitzky.

He said the conventional view is that the average European immigrants held substantially lower-paying jobs than native-born Americans upon first arrival and caught up with natives' earnings after spending some time in the United States. But that perception does not hold up to the facts, he said.

Abramitzky's co-authors include Leah Platt Boustan from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Katherine Eriksson from California Polytechnic State University.

The researchers examined records on 21,000 natives and immigrants from 16 European countries in U.S. Census Bureau data from 1900 to 1910 to 1920.

"Even when U.S. borders were open, the average immigrant who ended up settling in the United States over the long term held occupations that commanded pay similar to that of U.S. natives upon first arrival," Abramitzky said.

In that bygone era of "open borders," Abramitzky said, native-born Americans were concerned that immigrants were not assimilating properly into society – yet, on the whole, this concern appears to be unfounded. "Such concerns are echoed in today's debate over immigration policy," he added.

At the same time, Abramitzky said that immigrants from poorer countries started out with lower paid occupations relative to natives and did not manage to close this gap over time.

"This pattern casts doubt on the conventional view that, in the past, immigrants who arrived with few skills were able to invest in themselves and succeed in the U.S. economy within a single generation," Abramitzky and his colleagues wrote.

Age of migration

America took in more than 30 million immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), a period when the country had open borders. By 1910, 22 percent of the U.S. labor force – and 38 percent of workers in non-southern cities – was foreign-born (compared with 17 percent today).

As the research showed, immigrants then were more likely than natives to settle in states with a high-paying mix of occupations. Location choice was an important strategy they used to achieve occupational parity with native-born Americans.

"This Age of Mass Migration not only is of interest in itself, as one of the largest migration waves in modern history, but also is informative about the process of immigrant assimilation in a world without migration restrictions," Abramitzky said.

Over time, many of the immigrants came from the poorer regions of southern and eastern Europe.

Abramitzky pointed out that native-born Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned about poverty in immigrant neighborhoods and low levels of education among children, many of whom left school early to work in industry.

Consequently, American political progressives championed a series of reforms, including U.S. child labor laws and compulsory schooling requirements.

Still, some natives believed that new arrivals would never fit into American society. And so, in 1924, Congress set a strict quota of 150,000 immigrant arrivals per year, with more slots allocated to immigrants from northern and western European countries than those from southern and eastern Europe.

But those early-20th-century fears of unassimilated immigrants were baseless, according to Abramitzky.

"Our results indicate that these concerns were unfounded: The average long-term immigrants in this era arrived with skills similar to those of natives and experienced identical rates of occupational upgrading over their life cycle," he wrote.

How does this lesson apply to today's immigration policy discussion? Should the numbers of immigrants and their countries of origin be limited and those with higher skills be given more entry slots?

Abramitzky said stereotyping immigrants has affected the political nature of the contemporary debate.

"These successful outcomes suggest that migration restrictions are not always necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in the labor market," he said.

In this week's Politico, David Remnick has written a lengthy piece about former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul's rocky tenure in Moscow, as Vladir Putin came back into power as president and U.S.-Russia relations began to deteriorate.

Michael A. McFaul, a FSI senior fellow and CISAC affiliated faculty member, writes in this Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law that while the U.S. and Europe maintain pressure on Putin through sanctions, the West also needs to get serious about strengthening Ukraine.

"So far, Ukrainians have done more to thwart Mr. Putin than any action by outside powers," says McFaul. "The West can likewise do more to help the Kiev government win hearts and minds in eastern Ukraine."

And in a Politico magazine piece by McFaul earlier this week, he argues that Putin today sees a path to glory that does not involve democratic governance and ignores international norms.

"Putin dreams of comparisons with Peter the Great or the Catherine the Great," writes McFaul, who was ambassador in Moscow from January 2012 until this February, when he returned to Stanford as a political science professor at FSI's New Yorker.

"But if we judge him by his ability to achieve even his own stated goals, his record is not so great. He has achieved some objectives aimed at restoring Russia to the position of global greatness he believes it deserves, but failed at achieving those most important to him. And the future looks even darker."

Northeast Asia is a global center of economic dynamism, propelled by phenomenal growth in social and cultural interactions among the region's nations. Still, wounds from past wrongs, committed during times of colonialism and war, have not yet fully healed, and the question of history has become a highly contentious diplomatic issue. After one and a half years in office, the leaders of China and South Korea (Korea hereafter) still refuse to hold bilateral summits with their Japanese counterpart, largely due to disputes over the past. Questions about history touch on the most sensitive issues of national identity, making it very difficult for countries to compromise.

How should we understand and approach current historical tensions in Northeast Asia? Pessimists worry that the legacies of the past will persist and that there is not much we can do about it. Optimists believe that these issues will inevitably fade over time as the wartime generation passes away and the countries of the region become increasingly integrated economically and culturally.

Last summer, I had an opportunity to deliver a special lecture series at a Korean university. More than 30 students from China, Japan, Korea, the U.S. and Europe attended the lectures, which focused on problems related to the modern history of Northeast Asia and territorial disputes. I asked students whether they thought Japan had apologized for its past actions of aggression. Korean and Chinese students mostly replied that Japan had either "not apologized at all" or was "not sincere." In contrast, most Japanese students were hardly aware of the misfortunes of the past and the controversies about the government's stance.

The historical amnesia of Japanese students is most worrisome, but the insistence by Chinese and Korean students that the Japanese have not apologized at all is troubling, too. Although the definition of "apology" may vary depending on circumstances, it is undeniable that Japanese leaders, including prime ministers, have directly expressed regret about Japan's actions of aggression to Koreans and Chinese. Of course, legitimate doubts arise in Korea and China as to Japan's sincerity. More than once, a prime minister's apology has been undercut by the denial of wartime responsibility by his education minister, or by a subsequent visit by the prime minister to the Yasukuni Shrine to Japan's war dead.

My teaching experience illustrates the danger posed by a crucial gap in perceptions. History does not merely narrate events or developments. In reconstructing the past, it is inevitable that certain parts are omitted or stressed, producing different views. Divided historical memories separate nations, resulting in distinct, often contradictory, perceptions. Those perceptions become deeply embedded in the public consciousness, transmitted to succeeding generations formally by education and informally through the arts, popular culture and mass media.

Time isn't a cure-all

Why have these nations developed distinct, and incomplete, memories of the wartime period?

One common answer is that Japan was an aggressor while China and Korea were victims, but this is too simplistic to explain the complexities of modern history and collective memory in Northeast Asia. Different events acquire disproportionate weight in the formation of each nation's historical consciousness. For China and Korea, Japanese acts of aggression -- such as the Nanjing Massacre or forced labor and sexual slavery -- constitute the most crucial elements. For Japan, events related to U.S. actions, such as the firebombings of Japanese cities or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are more important. Korea and China are a less significant element in Japan's memory, while Japan looms large in theirs.

Japan's focus on U.S. actions, over the sufferings of Koreans and Chinese, explains the country's historical amnesia and reluctance to come to terms with its Asian neighbors. Unlike Germany, postwar Japan developed a mythology of victimhood, shaped by the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the massive incendiary and atomic bombings of its cities. Victim consciousness provided fertile soil for the growth of postwar neo-nationalism that justified colonialism and war and denied Japan's responsibility for atrocities.

Balanced historical memory with a better understanding of the perspective of the other side is urgently needed. Japan needs to clearly comprehend the mindset of its neighbors, instead of complaining about its "apology fatigue." China and Korea are also responsible for educating their citizens about Japan's own struggle to come to terms with its past. That kind of mutual understanding rests on resuming efforts at joint historical study with a commitment to open-minded debate. Only then can the nations of Northeast Asia begin to narrow perception gaps and forge a shared view.

This is a task not only for governments but for civil society. We should encourage exchanges among young people from the three countries, including joint visits to historic sites such as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Seodaemun Prison History Museum in Seoul. Such gatherings would constitute a regionwide attempt to share and heal the pains of the past. Disregarding or ignoring dark events means not only evading historical accountability but also missing the opportunity to learn from history. Germany's failure to learn from its defeat in World War I led to the rise of Nazism and another world war. The German experience should provide a valuable lesson for all, especially Japan.

We cannot depend on time alone to heal these wounds. When issues of the past posed a stumbling block in improving relations between China and Japan in the 1970s, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said, "Because our generation is not wise enough to resolve all of the pending questions, let's leave the unsettled ones to the next generation." Contrary to his expectations, however, the two countries are stricken today with a worse situation involving history and territorial disputes, and the younger generation tends to be even more swayed by the fever of nationalism.

This is a moment of both danger and opportunity for Northeast Asia. The current impasse in regional relations demands a commitment to confronting the corrosive nationalism fed by the unresolved issues of history. As the wartime generation passes from the scene, they are called upon to leave behind a wiser generation capable of realizing the potential of Northeast Asia to be the center of the 21st century.

This article was originally carried by Nikkei Asian Review on 25 July and reposted with permission.

Human Capital & Ageing

as part of the "Next World Program"

Harvard School of Public Health

Boston, Massachusetts

April 13-14, 2015

Organized by:

David E. Bloom, Harvard School of Public Health, USA; David Canning, Harvard School of Public Health, USA; Karen Eggleston, Stanford University, USA; Wang Feng, Fudan University, China; Hans Groth, World Demographic & Ageing Forum, Switzerland; Alfonso Sousa-Poza, University of Hohenheim, Germany; Thomas Zeltner, Special Envoy, World Health Organization, Switzerland.

Topic

One of the challenges faced by ageing societies is maintaining a workforce large enough to supply the goods and services needed by a country's entire population. In the coming decades, industrialized countries will experience a steep increase in the share of elderly persons in the population and a fall in the share of the working-age population. In some countries, the number of people aged 60-64 (many of whom are about to retire) already exceeds the number of people aged 15-19 (the cohort soon entering the labour market). There will, however, be mitigating factors that will tend to decrease the effects of declines in the working-age share of the population: (a) the burden of caring for a high number of elderly people will be offset by there being fewer children to support, and (b) the proportion of adult women who work will rise when there are fewer children to take care of. Still, if there is no change in work and retirement patterns, the ratio of older inactive persons per worker will almost double from around 38 percent in the OECD area in 2000 to just over 70 percent in 2050 (OECD, "Live Longer, Work Longer", 2006). In Europe, this ratio could rise to almost one older inactive person for every worker over the same period.

Ageing on the anticipated scale will place substantial pressure on public finances and economic growth. According to the OECD, on the basis of unchanged participation patterns and productivity growth, the growth of GDP per capita in the OECD area would decline to around 1.7 percent per year over the next three decades, as compared with about 2.4 percent per year between 1970 and 2000. These negative consequences of ageing could be possibly offset by postponement of retirement, greater immigration, faster productivity growth, or higher fertility (although the positive economic effects of higher fertility would only come several decades after an uptick in fertility rates). While these developments would all help offset the negative effects, they need to go hand-in-hand with attempts to mobilize available labour in order to sustain economic growth. One of the most significant sources of additional labour supply is older people who are currently inactive. Indeed, as labour markets tighten, companies will soon have little choice but to be more welcoming of older employees. Prompt action to harness – and enhance – the contributions of older workers could become a key competitive advantage.

The objective of this workshop would be to discuss one important topic related to an ageing workforce, namely human capital. How does a worker’s human capital change over the life course and what role does the health and skill status of workers play? The answer to these questions is of great importance, not only for adequate human resource policies, but also for macroeconomic policies, especially those associated with retirement and economic growth. Despite the importance of this issue, this question is not easily answered.

The workshop will bring together researchers to present recent research on ageing and human capital. Research questions and topics that could be dealt with include:

• Human capital, economic growth, and the demographic dividend.
• Firm-level experience in promoting human capital among older workers.
• Evaluation of policies aimed at enhancing the quantity, quality, and value of older workers’ human capital.
• The relationship between human capital and productivity.
• Training and wages of older workers.
• Technological change, knowledge replenishment, and productivity. 

Submission for the Workshop

Interested authors are invited to submit a 1-page abstract by the 30th of September 2014 to David E. Bloom (dbloom@hsph.harvard.edu) and Alfonso Sousa-Poza (Alfonso.sousa-poza@uni-hohenheim.de). The authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by the end of October and completed draft papers will then be expected by the 28th of February 2015.

Economy class travel and accommodation costs for one author of each accepted paper will be covered by the organisers.

A selection of the papers presented at the workshop will (assuming successful completion of the review process) be published in a special issue of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing.

Submission for the Special Issue

Interested authors (also those not attending the workshop) are invited to submit papers for the special issue in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing by the 31st of May 2015. Submissions should be made online at http://ees.elsevier.com/jeoa. Please select article type “SI Human Capital.”

About the Next World Program

The Next World Program is a joint initiative of Harvard University’s Program on the Global Demography of Aging, the WDA Forum, Stanford University’s Asia Health Policy Program, and Fudan University’s Comparative Aging Societies. These institutions will organize an annual workshop and a special issue in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing on an important economic theme related to ageing societies.

Hunger touches the lives of people throughout the world, from the affluent Bay Area to the most impoverished regions of rural Africa. Food security – the availability of plentiful, nutritious, and affordable food – is a pressing issue for rich and poor countries alike as the world population moves toward 9 billion by mid-century.

In her new book The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Oxford University Press, August), Professor Rosamond Naylor takes a holistic approach to the question of how to feed the world. Naylor, a professor of environmental earth system science and director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), convened 18 colleagues from across Stanford’s diverse disciplines to shed light on the interdependent issues that affect global food security.

Throughout its 14 chapters, and a foreword by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the book takes up two important questions: How does the challenge of achieving food security change as countries develop economically? And how do food and agriculture policies in one country affect nutrition, food access, natural resources and national security in other countries?

Collaboration across disciplines

Naylor, who edited the volume and co-authored several chapters, explained that The Evolving Sphere of Food Security is the first book of its kind to engage faculty and scholars from across Stanford’s campus on issues of global hunger.

Professor Rosamond Naylor

“This book grew out of a recognition by Stanford scholars that food security is tied to security of many other kinds,” said Naylor, who is also William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Food security has clear connections with energy, water, health, the environment and national security, and you can’t tackle just one of those pieces.”

Stanford has a long history of fostering cross-disciplinary work on global issues. It is in this spirit that the idea for the book was born, Naylor said. The book weaves together the expertise of authors from the fields of medicine, political science, engineering, law, economics and climate science.

“Stanford was the ideal place for this project. A book like this exemplifies how collaborative, interdisciplinary research can be greater than the sum of its parts,” Naylor said. “We have painted a much more inclusive picture of food security than if we had approached these questions from only one discipline.”

Rooted in field research

Another unique feature of the book is that each author’s insights are shaped by years of hands-on research and policymaking experience around the world.

Several authors, for example, have been instrumental in shaping U.S. and global food policy for decades. Walter Falcon, professor emeritus of economics and the deputy director of FSE, traces his career as an agricultural economics advisor to the Indonesian government, where he witnessed the country’s dramatic improvements in combating hunger and poverty since the 1960s.

Political science professor Stephen Stedman recounts his experience as a security policy advisor to the United Nations during the 2000s. Recognizing that food insecurity can exacerbate civil conflict, weaken governments and threaten international stability, Stedman worked to integrate food security into traditional security agendas.

Other authors have spent many years working in East Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East and Europe. As a whole, said Naylor, the team has conducted well over a hundred years’ worth of field research all over the world.

Challenges evolve as countries develop

A recurring theme throughout the book – also reflected in its title – is the evolving nature of the food security challenges countries face as they move through stages of economic growth. At low levels of development, countries struggle to meet people’s basic needs. For example, Naylor’s chapter on health, co-authored with Eran Bendavid (medicine), Jenna Davis and Amy Pickering (civil and environmental engineering), describes a recent study showing that poor nutrition and rampant disease in rural Kenya is closely tied to contaminated, untreated drinking water. Addressing these essential health and sanitation issues is a key first step toward food security for the poorest countries.

As nations rise above the bottom rungs of development, they encounter new challenges. Scott Rozelle, director of the Rural Education Action Program, warns that middle income countries like China now face a “second food security crisis” of widespread micronutrient deficiency. Recent rapid economic and agricultural advancements have largely solved the problem of supplying sufficient calories. But this progress masks what Rozelle describes as “hidden hunger,” or a lack of vitamins and minerals that impedes kids’ school performance and could slow China’s long-term growth. Even in rich countries like the U.S., said Naylor, malnutrition can be a drag on educational and economic performance.

Developed countries face other unique tradeoffs in the use of resources for food production. In his chapter on water institutions, Buzz Thompson, professor of law and co-director of the Woods Institute, explains that conflicts over water increase between smallholder and industrial users as countries develop. Eric Lambin, professor of environmental earth system science, and Ximena Rueda, research associate in earth sciences, offer the paradox that as countries grow wealthier, changing patterns of agricultural land use may actually worsen food security by fueling the spread of obesity and diabetes.

At its core, said Naylor, The Evolving Sphere of Food Security is about more than economic and policy trends. “The book puts a human face to food security, because hunger is an intensely human experience,” she said. “This book tells an integrated story about people’s lives, and how they are shaped by resource use and the policy process around global food security.”