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The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2019

Katherine Eriksson  and
Zachary Ward
Katherine Eriksson
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of California-Davis, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER, and Research Associate at LEAP, Stellenbosch University. E-mail: kaeriksson@ucdavis.edu.
Zachary Ward
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Baylor University, 1621 S 3rd Street, Waco, TX, 76798. E-mail: zach.a.ward@gmail.com.
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Abstract

We provide the first estimates of immigrant residential segregation between 1850 and 1940 that cover the entire United States and are consistent across time and space. To do so, we adapt the Logan–Parman method to immigrants by measuring segregation based on the nativity of the next-door neighbor. In addition to providing a consistent measure of segregation, we also document new patterns such as high levels of segregation in rural areas, in small factory towns and for non-European sources. Early twentieth-century immigrants spatially assimilated at a slow rate, leaving immigrants’ lived experience distinct from natives for decades after arrival.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 989 - 1026
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2019 

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Footnotes

We thank William Collins, Tim Hatton, Laura Panza, John Parman, Allison Shertzer, Dafeng Xu, and anonymous referees for helpful comments. We thank those at the University of Minnesota Population Center and Ancestry.com for access to historical census files.

References

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