During the early twentieth century, industrial-era European immigrants entered the United States with lower levels of education than the U.S. average. However, empirical research has yielded unclear and inconsistent evidence about the extent and pace of their integration, leaving openings for arguments that contest the narrative that these groups experienced rapid integration and instead assert that educational deficits among lower-status groups persisted across multiple generations. Here, we advance another argument, that European immigrants may have 'leapfrogged' or exceeded U.S.-born non-Hispanic white attainment by the third generation. To assess these ideas, we reconstituted three-generation families by linking individuals across the 1940 census; years 1973, 1979, and 1981 to 1990 of the Current Population Survey; the 2000 census; and years 2001 to 2017 of the American Community Survey. Results show that most European immigrant groups not only caught up with U.S.-born whites by the second generation but surpassed them, and this advantage further increased in the third generation. This research provides a new understanding of the time to integration for twentieth-century European immigrant groups by showing that they integrated at a faster pace than previously thought, indicative of a process of accelerated upward mobility.

中文翻译：

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跨越熔炉？二十世纪欧洲移民的代际流动


二十世纪初，工业时代的欧洲移民进入美国，其教育水平低于美国平均水平。然而，实证研究就其融合的程度和速度提供了不明确且不一致的证据，这为质疑这些群体经历了快速融合的说法留下了空间，并断言地位较低群体的教育缺陷在多代人中持续存在。在这里，我们提出另一个论点，即欧洲移民第三代可能已经“跨越”或超过了美国出生的非西班牙裔白人的成就。为了评估这些想法，我们通过将 1940 年人口普查中的个人联系起来，重建了三代家庭； 1973年、1979年和1981年至1990年的当前人口调查； 2000年人口普查；以及 2001 年至 2017 年的美国社区调查。结果表明，大多数欧洲移民群体在第二代时不仅赶上了美国出生的白人，而且还超越了他们，而且这种优势在第三代时进一步增强。这项研究表明，二十世纪欧洲移民群体的融合速度比之前想象的要快，这表明他们正在加速向上流动的过程，从而对二十世纪欧洲移民群体的融合时间提供了新的认识。