Past-present comparisons of second-generation progress are often plagued by vague references to the baseline, the past. This essay seeks to contribute some specificity to the understanding of second generations past for the sake of comparison and as a contribution to historical understanding in...

This paper presents a new approach to measuring the extent of intermarriage among Americans of different ethnic origins. Using U.S. Census microdata and CPS data, measurements of the rates of Italian- American intermarriages across four generations are made to demonstrate that these rates were...

The upward mobility of Jews who migrated to the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century has been explained as a function of premigrational cultural characteristics (such as a tradition of learning) or structural attributes (skills in certain industries and occupations that could be...

One part of this paper is methodological, or bibliographical in nature; I argue that a body of evidence that scholars have dismissed for a century as useless may in fact be very valuable. The evidence to which I refer is data on Jewish literacy found in the 1897 Census of the Russian Empire. A...

This working paper directs to an historical puzzle, the rapid upward mobility of the east-European Jews who came to the United States between 1880 and 1920. Theoretically important issues are inherent in the explanations for Jewish upward mobility, and in any case, this particular historical...

We have constructed some preliminary comparisons involving present-day immigrants and natives, as well as their children, based on the 1990 Census. In particular we are interested in whether the prognosis for the second generation is as grim as recent discussions of "second generation decline"...

Assimilation of today's immigrants is one topic of current debate on immigration. Some observers assert that recent immigrants are unable to assimilate into U.S. society as easily as past immigrants were able to. Others counter that the pressures against assimilation today are not strong. In...

If a child has a white mother and a black father, then the child is racially.... what? How the next Census, to be held in the year 2000, should handle the multiracial' child will be decided by October. Moreover, every government agency counts races in roughly the same way, and it is the...

Contemporary ethnic and racial intermarriage are the subject of increasing discussion in connection with America's future population; with such concerns in mind, the paper suggests a reorientation of ethnic intermarriage studies and provides related data. Yet our long record of historical...

This paper serves as an opportunity to pull together some thoughts and questions about modes of incorporation as an explanation for ethnic differences in behavior. Specifically, I ask just what is the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior if ethnic behavior is approaches from a...