Convergence Between Black Immigrants and Black Natives Across ...

Regressions underlying Figure 10a and 10b test this hypothesis by running labor force participation on a
set of controls and age of immigration dummies. To avoid differences in welfare eligibility requirements, the
sample is restricted to US citizens. For men, we see a clear upward-sloping trend in labor force participation
by age of immigration for all races. For black, Hispanic, and Asian men the coefficient starts at about
0, suggesting that these immigrant groups portray the same labor force participation patterns as natives
when they immigrate as newborns. Similar to the across-generation analysis, blacks experience the greatest
gradient in labor force participation patterns in the within generation analysis. All else equal, a male black
immigrating in his late thirties is 20 percentage points more likely to participate in the labor force than a
black immigrant who arrives as a newborn. For females this difference reaches a striking 30 percentage
points.
For log earnings, the convergence between black immigrants and black natives is especially pronounced
for low-educated immigrants. To see whether the same holds true for labor force participation, Figure 11a
and 11b restrict the sample to individuals with a high school degree or less. Now both, black immigrant men
and women who arrive in their late thirties are 30 percentage points more likely to participate in the labor
force than blacks who arrive when they are infants.
Self-selection is more likely to be important as age of immigration increases and interacts with the
assimilation effect. If immigrants in their 30s migrate to the US, they are likely migrating in order to find a
job. Hence we would expect labor force participation behavior of their peers to be less important. To test this
hypothesis Figure 12a and 12b split the black sample into immigrants from countries with many refugees and
from countries without. Refugees have different motives for migrating than economic immigrants. While
refugees are likely fleeing political or religious persecution, economic immigrant’s main motive is likely
work-related. Figure 12a and 12b show that the strong assimilation in labor force participation of blacks is
indeed driven by immigrants from non-refugee countries. There are two reasons to believe that assimilation
is important beyond its interaction with self-selection. First, children under the age of 15 are probably
accompanying their parents and not selecting to leave their home country on their own. The upward-sloping
pattern holds for young children as well as adults. Second, the gradients differ greatly by race, which is
likely to be, at least in part, due to differences in assimilation patterns.
6.3 Robustness Check
Focusing on children alone, the possibility remains that parents who immigrate when their child is an infant
might be very different from parents who immigrate when their child is a teenager. In order to address
this issue, we can look at children who still live with their parents and see whether there are any apparent
differences in parental characteristics across age of immigration of the child.
The new sample is restricted to children and teenagers that are 15 or younger in the 1990 census. This
allows for most individuals to be old enough to hypothetically make it into the 2000-2011 adult sample
without having to work with the coarse 5-year year of immigration bins in earlier censuses. Figures 12a
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