Woodznutz
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- Dec 9, 2021
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"Measuring cultural assimilation is a challenge because data on cultural practices—things like food, dress, and accent—are not systematically collected. But the names that parents choose for their children are collected, offering a revealing window into the cultural assimilation process.[2] Using 2 million census records from 1920 and 1940, we constructed a foreignness index indicating the probability that a given name would be held by a foreigner or a native.
For example, people with names like Hyman or Vito were almost certain to be children of immigrants, while youngsters with names like Clay or Lowell were likely to have native parents. In this respect, children’s names are signals of cultural identity. Giving a child an American-sounding name is a financially cost-free way of identifying with U.S. culture. Thus, we can trace the assimilation process by examining changes in the names immigrants gave their offspring as they spent more time in the U.S.
Our key finding is that for immigrants who arrived in the 1900s and 1910s, the more time they spent in the U.S., the less likely they were to give their children foreign-sounding names. Figure 1 shows that after 20 years in this country, half of the gap in name choice between immigrants and natives had disappeared. The shift in name choice happened at a roughly equal pace for sons and daughters and among poor and rich families."
What history tells us about assimilation of immigrants
Senior Fellow Ran Abramitzky examines some lessons learned from the Age of Mass Migration and says fears that immigrants cannot fit into American society are misplaced.
