This week's econ talk comes from liabustan and ran abrmiski. Their new book is streets of gold, america's untold story of emigrant success. Liabustan: The idea that immigrants aren't going to assimilate is a very old one. Run: In the last part of the nineteenth century german population would never turn out to be true.
Immigration to the United States, say Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, is more novel than short story: It takes decades for new immigrants to catch up economically. But their kids on average thrive economically and have higher rates of upward mobility than American-born kids. Abramitzky and Boustan talk about their book Streets of Gold with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Using an extraordinary data set of millions of Americans, Boustan and Abramitzky find that today's immigrants and their children are surprisingly similar to yesterday's.