Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An Economic History of Hispanic Migration and Assimilation

National Bureau Of Economic Research Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This research studies the migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland United States in the decades following World War II. As a result of migration in this period, Puerto Ricans are currently the largest Hispanic population in cities of the Eastern seaboard and overall the second largest Hispanic group in the US. Although Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917, they share many cultural and economic characteristics with the rest of Latin America. Thus, a better understanding of this historical period provides a window into migrant networks and future trends in migration from Latin America, the largest source of immigrants in the postwar era. The investigator uses data from employment applications submitted between 1948 and 1991 to a Puerto Rican public employment agency in the mainland US to better understand the skill level of those who chose to migrate, measure changes in the economic status of migrants, and analyze migrants' process of English acquisition and educational attainment after arrival. The dataset constructed will help to fill in gaps in historical knowledge, and the results of this research will have broad impacts on the study of migration. The research targets the exceptional data collections from the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States. With the newly created dataset, this research tracks migrant outcomes and uses information on the migrants' municipality of origin in Puerto Rico, date(s) of arrival in the US, and retrospective employment history for work both in Puerto Rico and the US. The analysis is divided into three sections. First, information on migrants' origin, arrival, and destination allows for assessment of the relationship between network size and migrant self-selection as networks evolve over time. Second, the short-run return to migration is measured by comparing the first wage of a migrant in the US to his/her last wage in Puerto Rico, while subsequent wages are used to assess convergence to natives and identify determinants of wage growth in the US. Third, the ostensible slow assimilation of Puerto Rican migrants is reexamined using new information on English acquisition and educational attainment after arrival in the US and by exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the data, which reduces the bias introduced by selective return migration. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.