Are You Changing Your Name?

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A lot of personal name changes do happen very quickly after arrival. Having having, for example, a more foreign sounding name was associated with less schooling, lower income, higher on employment and so on. It could be various different things, but all of them indicate a that you are willing to reduce your identity marker and get closer to what the the more dominant culture. So they're workin as social scientists for continuing to refine their algorithms.

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.