Any question that has to do with how a person does overtime requires a panel data. You require to link that person over er time. And so it's only when you are able to link same person overtime that you can see what happens with the person when he first arrived, and then 30 years later, and then what happens to his child. Thet is really, i think, a challenging question that to take quality antoacount accurately is hard to do. I am much more optimistic that there's much more mobility in the united states than children.
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.