Acquiring Human Capital through the Generations by Migration

Our focus will be on the role of migration to the United States from a set of important European sending countries as a device for improving the human capital of the children and grandchildren of migrants as measured by their education. In this paper, we derive a new and conceptual more appropriate measure of the generational gains in schooling attributable to migration by taking into account the correct counter-factual – the generational education gains that would have taken place if these migrants had remained in their sending countries. We find that the two European countries where the descendants gained the most in terms of human capital are Italy and Poland.