Life after crossing the border: Assimilation during the first Mexican mass migration

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Abstract

The first mass migration of Mexicans to the United States occurred in the early twentieth century: from smaller pre-Revolutionary flows in the 1900s, to hundreds of thousands during the violent 1910s, to the boom of the 1920s, and then the bust and deportations/repatriations of the 1930s. Using a new linked sample of males, we find that the average Mexican immigrant held a lower percentile rank, based on imputed earnings, than US-born whites near arrival. Further, Mexicans fell behind in the following decade. Mexican assimilation was not uniquely slow since we also find that the average Italian immigrant fell behind at a similar rate. Yet, conditional on geography, human capital, and initial percentile rank, Mexicans had a slower growth rate than both US-born whites and Italians. Mexican assimilation was also remarkably constant throughout various shocks, such as violence in Mexico, migration policy change in the United States, and the Great Depression. We argue that Mexican-specific structural barriers help to explain why Mexican progress was slow and similar across this tumultuous period.

Section snippets

1. A brief overview of the rise of Mexican mass migration in the early 20th century

Mexican immigration changed dramatically in the early 20th century due to a mix of push and pull factors (see Fig. A1 for changes in the Mexican-born population over time). Employment opportunities in agriculture, mining, and railroads increased as the American Southwest boomed (Cardoso 1980; Clark 1908; Gratton and Merchant, 2015; Taylor, 1929). As more, mainly unskilled, laborers from the north and central plateau of Mexico arrived, migration networks developed, which further increased

Linking Mexican immigrants

To estimate Mexican immigrants’ rate of economic assimilation, we build a linked dataset of males from the 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 complete-count United States Censuses, accessed at the National Bureau of Economic Research (Ruggles et al., 2020).11

The economic assimilation of Mexican immigrants

The Mexicans in our sample are first observed far behind US-born whites and Italians in both percentile rank and earnings score (see Table 1). The gaps were large: Mexicans were 34 percentiles lower than US-born whites and 22 percentiles lower than Italians at first observation (i.e., the first census after arrival for immigrants).20

Explaining the differences in levels and the differences in growth rates

We have shown that Mexicans fell behind US-born whites on average, but this pattern is the unconditional assimilation rate without controls for observable characteristics. It may be that differences in human capital, location, networks, or residential segregation explain the gap. To explore the economic gaps at first observation, we estimate:yi=γ0+γ1Mexicoi+γ2Italyi+Π′Xi+εiwhere we regress the first census's percentile rank on an indicator variable for Mexico and Italy. US-born white is the

Discussion of reasons for negative Mexican assimilation

One reason for a persistent gap in earnings growth score is that the human capital controls we use (literacy and English fluency) do not fully capture differences across Mexicans, US-born whites, and Italians. While not available in all of our data, a better human capital control exists in 1940: educational attainment. Educational gaps across groups were large; Mexicans in our sample had 4.0 years of education on average, while Italians had 5.7 years and US-born whites had 9.2 years.

Conclusions

We show that during the first wave of Mexican mass migration, Mexicans started off far behind US-born whites, and fell further behind in the decade after. Observable characteristics do not fully explain these gaps; in fact, controlling for characteristics widens the gap in the upgrading rate from census to census. We also find that Mexican arrival cohorts between 1900 and 1929, which varied in skill composition due to violence in Mexico and policy in the United States, all experienced similar

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    • Part of this paper was previously circulated under “The Uneven Advance of Mexican Americans Prior to World War II”. We thank audiences at Xavier University, the 2017 NBER DAE Summer Institute, the 2017 Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economists Conference, and the 2018 ASSA. Thanks to Lee Alston and Katherine Eriksson who helped Zachary Ward gain access to the full-count census data. Also thanks for Ariell Zimran for sharing data on Italian heights.

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