Children of Immigrants in the Big Apple Do Well!

A recent study reported on in the N.Y. Times tells us what really should not be news.  The study of adult children of immigrants to the New York region has concluded that they are rapidly entering the mainstream and doing better than their parents in terms of education and earnings — even outperforming native-born Americans in many cases. But the study also warned of problems that could block upward mobility for members of the “second generation,” including persistent poverty and poor school performance among Dominicans and racial discrimination against black immigrants from the Caribbean.

The study is published in “Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age.” It focused on five groups: Dominicans, Chinese, Russian Jews, South Americans, and West Indians. The researchers also interviewed native-born whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans in the New York area for comparison purposes. The study identified broad similarities among adult children of immigrants. They were overwhelmingly fluent in English; were less occupationally segregated than their parents; lived longer with their parents than native-born Americans; and were firmly rooted in the United States, with fewer personal and financial ties to their ancestral homeland than their parents.

KJ