<story><title>Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born</title><url>https://www.nber.org/papers/w26408</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsanr2</author><text>Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don&amp;#x27;t exclude African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a whole.&lt;p&gt;All of this seems to suggest that there is something about the American education system - and perhaps our overal culture - that is failing our children, and our black children in particular.&lt;p&gt;This also makes me wonder if there&amp;#x27;s data about the mobility of native vs immigrant blacks. If it&amp;#x27;s similar, it would align with other data that show that degree attainment only serves to partially overcome the barriers to upward mobility placed in the way of black workers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that many of the impediments that punish or withhold assistance from minorities often bleed over into mainstream American life. The specific drum I&amp;#x27;ll keep beating is that if, perhaps, the infrastructure to battle the crack&amp;#x2F;cocaine epidemic as a public health issue had been allowed to be built to a robust state, the opioid epidemic would not have become so dire. The apathy towards these issues, even as they encroach upon &amp;quot;mainstream&amp;quot; middle class life, must be part of the mechanics of the calcification of class in America.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.equality-of-opportunity.org&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;race_paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.equality-of-opportunity.org&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;race...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probability one would except of there was zero correlation between child and parent incomes). For Asian Americans its almost 27%. A white child born in the bottom quantile is about 2.5 times more likely to &lt;i&gt;stay&lt;/i&gt; in the bottom quantile (28%) than to rise to the top quantile (12%). An asian child born in the bottom quantile is about 1.5 times more likely to &lt;i&gt;rise&lt;/i&gt; to the top quantile (27%) than to stay in the bottom quantile (12%).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acephal</author><text>Black SWE here, grew up on the west side of Chicago, I don&amp;#x27;t think most white people understand how bad the literacy situation is. I could read competently before I even got to school and I went to grammar school in the 90s. First day of first grade, I found out &lt;i&gt;no one&lt;/i&gt; could competently read a sentence. In fact, whole school (which has closed) was on this remedial education program called Advanced Directives or something. I&amp;#x27;d never seen a book where the words were broken up syllable-by-syllable before I got to this school and I&amp;#x27;m like 7 years old, and kids struggled with that. Making this a little more personal,  I ultimately had to be separated from the other kids, and you can imagine why: you can&amp;#x27;t have one kid making all the others feel embarrassed and inadequate. But this also was a major source of resentment and ostracization that I&amp;#x27;m still dealing with to this day.</text></comment>
<story><title>Children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than US-born</title><url>https://www.nber.org/papers/w26408</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsanr2</author><text>Something that many HNers will probably be embarrased to admit being surprised by is how higher education attainment rates for immigrants don&amp;#x27;t exclude African immigrants. In fact, black immigrants from Africa and the West Indies have among the highest degree attainment rate of any group. This belies the lower college-and-advanced-degree attainment rate for black Americans as a whole.&lt;p&gt;All of this seems to suggest that there is something about the American education system - and perhaps our overal culture - that is failing our children, and our black children in particular.&lt;p&gt;This also makes me wonder if there&amp;#x27;s data about the mobility of native vs immigrant blacks. If it&amp;#x27;s similar, it would align with other data that show that degree attainment only serves to partially overcome the barriers to upward mobility placed in the way of black workers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that many of the impediments that punish or withhold assistance from minorities often bleed over into mainstream American life. The specific drum I&amp;#x27;ll keep beating is that if, perhaps, the infrastructure to battle the crack&amp;#x2F;cocaine epidemic as a public health issue had been allowed to be built to a robust state, the opioid epidemic would not have become so dire. The apathy towards these issues, even as they encroach upon &amp;quot;mainstream&amp;quot; middle class life, must be part of the mechanics of the calcification of class in America.</text></item><item><author>rayiner</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s particularly interesting to look at the mobility statistics of asian americans (many of whom are also immigrants) as a category: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.equality-of-opportunity.org&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;race_paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.equality-of-opportunity.org&amp;#x2F;assets&amp;#x2F;documents&amp;#x2F;race...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If you look at table 1 on page 56, you can see that for white americans, the probability of a child ending up in the top quantile of income where a parent is in the bottom quantile of income is 11% (about half the probability one would except of there was zero correlation between child and parent incomes). For Asian Americans its almost 27%. A white child born in the bottom quantile is about 2.5 times more likely to &lt;i&gt;stay&lt;/i&gt; in the bottom quantile (28%) than to rise to the top quantile (12%). An asian child born in the bottom quantile is about 1.5 times more likely to &lt;i&gt;rise&lt;/i&gt; to the top quantile (27%) than to stay in the bottom quantile (12%).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>codingslave</author><text>Most of the reason for immigrant children doing so well is the fact that immigrants are often more driven, ambitious, and at the top of their peer group. So the USA gets a biased sample of immigrants from countries like Nigeria. None of this is happening in a vacuum, and interpreting it as such is misguided propaganda.</text></comment>