Since the Immigration Act of 1965, millions of immigrants have moved to the United States, many of them in pursuit of economic mobility. Researchers and policy makers have debated the extent to which foreign-born workers are integrated into the U.S. economy, often on the basis of limited data and in contentious political contexts. Using earning records from the Social Security Administration, we track the complete cohort of foreign-born men who received social security numbers in 1978 throughout their subsequent working years and characterize their earning trajectories. We find that the share of foreign-born men with low earnings declined over time, but only as a result of increasing attrition from the labor force. We also show, for the first time, that immigrants’ employment and earning histories vary considerably by their countries of origin: while those from several countries in Asia and Africa experienced somewhat substantial earnings growth and tended to stay in the U.S. for the long term, immigrant men from Central America and the Caribbean experienced mostly earnings stagnation and had high levels of temporary and permanent attrition from the labor force.

中文翻译：

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流动性、停滞或损耗？外国出生男性群体的不同收入轨迹

自 1965 年《移民法》颁布以来，数以百万计的移民移居美国，其中许多人是为了追求经济流动性。研究人员和政策制定者一直在争论外国出生的工人融入美国经济的程度，通常是基于有限的数据和有争议的政治背景。使用社会保障局的收入记录，我们追踪了在 1978 年获得社会保障号码的外国出生男性在其随后的整个工作年中的完整队列，并描述了他们的收入轨迹。我们发现，低收入外国出生男性的比例随着时间的推移而下降，但这只是劳动力流失增加的结果。我们还首次表明，移民的就业和收入历史因原籍国而异：