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Current Issue: Fall 2023

THURJ

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VOLUME 14 | ISSUE 1

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Digital Access

Research Article 2

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<p class="font_8">Tables 1-6 display regression coefficients for all six Asian countries. In contrast to Borjas’s (2015) findings, where he observed that immigrants of all races and ethnicities in more recent cohorts had relatively lower entry wages compared to earlier cohorts, our study reveals a different trend among Asian immigrant cohorts. Specifically, we find that more recent Asian immigrant cohorts tend to experience either improved or similar levels of initial wage disadvantage upon entry compared to older cohorts for all six Asian countries.</p> <p class="font_8"><br></p> <p class="font_8">For example, when we control for age and education, Chinese immigrants who arrived in 1965 and 1975 earned approximately 70% less than natives during their first decade in the U.S. However, Chinese immigrants who arrived in 2005 earned around 50% less than natives, and this wage gap was further reduced to approximately 30% for the latest wave of Chinese immigrants arriving in 2015. This indicates an improvement in the initial wage disadvantage over time. Similarly, Indian immigrants experienced an initial wage disadvantage of around 50-60% compared to natives for the 1965 and 1975 cohorts, but this gap diminished with each subsequent cohort and eventually closed entirely by 2020. On the other hand, Filipino immigrants exhibited a relatively stable pattern, starting with the 1965 and 1975 cohorts earning around 50-60% less than natives upon arrival, and this wage disadvantage persisted in successive cohorts, plateauing at around 48-53% in 2005 and 2015. In contrast, Korean immigrants from the 1975 to 2005 cohorts had a wage gap of approximately 60% relative to natives, which reduced to around 40% in 2015, indicating a modest level of improvement relative to earlier cohorts. These examples either contradict Borjas's findings on lower entry wages for immigrants overall or demonstrate no significant changes in the long-term trend of entry wages for specific Asian countries.<br> <br> Next, we define the rate of economic assimilation as the pace at which the wage gap between migrants and natives narrows over time. In contrast to Borjas’s (2015) findings on the slowdown of assimilation rates in successive cohorts over time for immigrants of all origins (referred to as “cohort effects”), we find no substantial evidence of this collective assimilation pattern in successive cohorts for all six Asian countries.<br> For instance, when examining Korean and Japanese immigrants, we observe that the wage differential relative to natives for the 1950-1975 cohorts closed within their first decade upon arrival in the U.S., but it did not close as rapidly for subsequent cohorts within the first decade. Similarly, all Indian cohorts experienced rapid assimilation, with the wage gap closing for each cohort within their first five or ten years in the U.S. In contrast, Chinese immigrants experienced slower rates of assimilation, as seen in the 1950 and 1960 cohorts, where their wages were, on average, at a disadvantage of around 25.7% and 38.9%, respectively, compared to their native counterparts. This wage gap closed, as demonstrated in the 1990 and 2000 censuses, respectively, after 40 years of their residence in the U.S. Likewise, Vietnamese cohorts generally experienced much slower assimilation, with the wage gap closing for each cohort after 40 years of residency in the U.S.<br> <br> While the analyses above focus on the rate of assimilation over time between different countries, Figures 1-6 show the rate of assimilation between cohorts within a single country across time. We have normalized the wages for each cohort so that the logarithm of the wage at the time of entry is 0, thereby capturing the cohort effects and allowing us to visualize how cohorts evolve over time.</p> <p class="font_8"><br></p> <p class="font_8">When examining the graphs for Indian, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese immigrants, a general trend emerges where older cohorts tend to exhibit a higher rate of assimilation. However, in contrast, the graph for Chinese immigrants reveals that more recent cohorts experience a greater rate of assimilation.</p> <p class="font_8"><br> In summary, immigrant cohorts from each Asian country display unique and divergent trends, indicating the absence of any clear, uniform pattern. This finding contradicts the "model minority" myth that suggests a consistent pattern of success among Asian immigrant cohorts.</p>

Economic Assimilation of Asian American Immigrants by Nationality: Aging and Cohort Effects, and the Model Minority Myth

Shang Wang '24

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