Polish and Italian Schooling Then, Mexican Schooling Now?

U.S. Ethnic School Attainments across the Generations of the 20th Century

Joel Perlmann*

*Joel Perlmann is a senior scholar at the Levy Institute and a research professor at Bard College. He can be reached at perlmann@levy.org. This work was supported in part by the Russell Sage Foundation.

ABSTRACT

This paper relies on data from the census and the Current Population Survey (CPS) to compare levels of education attained by second-generation young people from important immigrant groups during the last great wave of immigration and by second-generation Mexican Americans today. In addition, it provides evidence, based on the CPS, about the earnings relative to level of schooling of the Mexican American second generation today.

INTRODUCTION

A dominant concern regarding the contemporary immigration to the United States involves the children and later descendants of the immigrants: will they manage to improve upon the conditions of their parents and repeat the pattern of earlier waves of immigration, namely, a slow but steady ascent over several generations? Discussion of the past most usefully concerns the last great wave of immigration, roughly 1890–1920, during which southern, central, and eastern Europeans from ethnic stocks that had been little known in the United States before that time, immigrated to a modern, industrial, society in great number. Today there is little difference in socioeconomic position between the descendants of that immigration and the descendants of much earlier arrivals to the United States (Lieberson and Waters 1988). Concern about the offspring of today's immigrants has been expressed most influentially in the theory of segmented assimilation suggested by Alejandro Portes and his colleagues (Portes and Zhou 1993, Portes and Rumbaut 1996). They expect that the offspring of middle-class immigrants will probably assimilate fairly easily, but they warn of the possibility that the children of immigrants entering American society at the bottom will have more trouble than did the children of immigrants who entered at the bottom in past eras. Today's offspring will have more trouble because i) they are non-white and American society is a long way from ignoring such differences; ii) the nature of the economy has changed so that industrial-economy jobs requiring minimal skill (but still an improvement over the parents' jobs) do not exist in great numbers as they did in the past; iii) extended education (necessary for today's better jobs) is out of the reach of immigrant families that enter at the bottom; and finally iv) an alienated, inner-city, non-white, youth culture will appeal to new, lower-class, second-generation youth who encounter blocked mobility.

My colleague, Roger Waldinger, and I have questioned this formulation of segmented assimilation noting that i) race divisions are socially constructed and tended to work against the immigrant stocks of 1890–1920 too; ii) low-skill work is not as scarce as claimed; iii) educational attainment may be adequate for notable upward mobility; iii) concerns about youth culture are hardly new to today's inner-city minorities and in any case depend on the first three concerns for their force (Perlmann and Waldinger 1996, 1997; Waldinger and Perlmann 1998).

In terms of this issue, the Mexican immigration has a special place. Mexicans comprise the largest immigrant group by far, and they are the prime example of a migrant group entering American society at the bottom, without high educational credentials and other economic advantages. One crucial issue, therefore, is the educational attainment of later-generation Mexican-Americans. We have, of course, some evidence on how members of later generations of Mexican-Americans fared in the past. But the past is not the present; the earlier history of the Mexican immigration is not the present-day experience. There are some reasons to worry that present-day conditions may actually be harder for immigrant offspring—besides those already noted, the size and long-term nature of the present immigration wave continues to generate competition for those who came earlier. And there are surely reasons to think that some things have changed for the better: first and foremost in terms of the civil rights of Mexican Americans as well as the fact that the immigration is no longer as heavily rural and agricultural in destination, nor limited to the Southwest of the country.

This paper extends earlier work that argued for careful generational comparisons of school attainment and for close comparisons of Italians and Poles then and Mexicans now (Perlmann 2001a, 2001b), because the Poles and Italians were the largest of the earlier immigrant groups and there is a clear advantage in not conflating the different historical trajectories of different immigrant groups (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, xvii, 312f). Also, Poles and Italians were groups made up of labor migrants, largely of low-skill workers who had to make their way from the bottom of the American class structure.

THE EVIDENCE AND THE LOGIC OF THE ANALYSIS

Throughout this paper, data is presented on the educational attainment of native-born blacks of native parentage. In the older data, in particular, the two poles of older-stock blacks and whites provide some measure of the range of American educational attainments. In the recent data, the benchmark of black educational attainment is important for comparative purposes if we take seriously the segmented assimilation theory, which in essence suggests the descendants of labor migrants (most notably the Mexicans) are in danger of assimilating into black America (or some similarly situated socioeconomic status).

This paper relies on two remarkable sources that social scientists have come to take for granted during the course of the past decade. The Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) for 1940–1970 provide us with 1 percent samples of the U.S. Censuses (2 percent for the 1970 Census). These are the first four decades in which respondents were asked about the highest grade they had attained in school. Also, these are the last four censuses to ask respondents about their parents', as well as their own birthplaces, so that immigrants and second-generation members can be identified.

The second source, the Current Population Survey (CPS), is a monthly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. I have used the March files covering the four years, 1998–2001. Although national samples from the 2000 Census are not expected to be available until 2003, those samples will not supercede the data used here because of the absence of information on parental birthplaces in that enumeration.1

Throughout, I have used 10-year birth cohorts to identify individuals in terms of historical period. In the 1998–2001 CPS datasets, individuals are identified by age at the date they were enumerated. For example, the ages involved can be as many as four years greater in the 2001 as in the 1998 CPS. In the 1940–1970 census samples from the IPUMS datasets, I could find the same birth cohort in several samples. For example, the cohort born between 1896 and 1905 was 35–44 years of age in 1940, 45–54 in 1950, 55–64 in 1960 and 65–74 in 1970. I used only the first two available datasets for each cohort (starting when the individuals were at least 25–34 years of age); in this example, data on the 1896–1905 birth cohort from the 1940 and 1950 censuses.2

The ethnic and generational definitions were constructed in the following way. From the IPUMS 1940–70 datasets, I drew the following selected ethnic groupings. Among the older stock are native whites of native parentage and native blacks of native parentage. Among the immigrant stock are first- and second-generation Poles, Italians, and Mexicans. Also, I distinguished between the second generation and what I have called the 2.5 generation, which here refers to those who had one immigrant parent from Poland, Italy, or Mexico, and one parent born in the United States (of whatever origin); this group is called native-born of mixed parentage. The 2.5 group differs in notable ways from the second generation; the crucial point to recall is that the tables refering to the second generation do not include the 2.5 generation members—second generation members are those with two foreign-born parents (on the significance of the second vs. 2.5 generation in terms of the historical timing of immigration, see Perlmann 2001a).

From the CPS samples, I drew samples of native-born whites and blacks of native parentage who were not of Hispanic origin. Although this definition differs slightly from the one used for the older stock in the IPUMS sample, the change does not affect any of the paper's substantive conclusions. Samples in the recent data were also drawn for Mexicans of different generations. First-generation members were born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at an age greater than 10. The "1.5 generation" includes those who immigrated to the United States at age 10 or younger; that is, at an age young enough to have probably profited from schooling in the United States. The second-generation proper (listed as "2nd generation" in the tables) are U.S.-born individuals reported to have two parents who were born in Mexico. The second generation of mixed origin (listed as "2ndM gen" in the tables) are U.S.-born individuals with one parent who was born in Mexico and another parent who was not born in Mexico. This other parent might be U.S.-born of Mexican origins, U.S.-born of other origins, or foreign-born from another country (including, of course, other countries in Latin America). The distinction being made between the two types of second-generation members is the one students of ethnic demography often make between native-born of foreign parentage and native-born of mixed parentage.3 The point here is not to study the mixed population, but to isolate a sample of the second generation that actually includes the group that I think theories about the second generation are meant to cover, namely, the native-born child with two Mexican-immigrant parents. At the same time, I want to insist upon the narrowness of that definition and to show just how many "exceptional" cases (the native-born child of one foreign born and one native- born parent) are found at different stages in the history of immigration.4

TIMING AND DURATION OF THE IMMIGRATIONS

Table 1 shows the proportion of second-generation members of each type—those with two foreign-born parents and those with one foreign-born and one native-born parent—in each of the birth cohorts available for Poles, Italians, and Mexicans. The Polish and Italian immigration was largely a product of the period 1900–15, with many of the others arriving between 1890 and 1900 (Perlmann 2001a). Accordingly, I include second generations born 1896 and after (the earlier cohorts were, as expected, much smaller). The Mexican immigration followed a different historical origin, originating earlier, but rising to relatively large numbers later. I include the Mexican second-generation members from the time in which the numbers are adequate (over 100 in relevant cells).5 Also, there is a crucial difference in the later history of these group migrations. The Polish and Italian immigration was drastically curtailed by World War I, and then by the immigration restriction acts enacted in 1921 and 1924. With the exception of a brief period (less than two years in duration), immigration from these countries after 1914 was vastly reduced and then virtually eliminated until after World War II. By contrast, Mexican immigration followed an uneven history through the 1920s and later was subject to restrictions of various sorts, but of shorter duration; the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 did not apply to the Western Hemisphere. As a result, not only the immigration flows, but also the timing of the second-generations and the proportion of second-generation members among Mexican Americans was very different than among Polish and Italian Americans (Panel A of Table 1). It is critical to appreciate this point in considering the Poles and Italians. If the immigration had been quickly winding down after 1915, and if the average adult immigrated between ages 18 and 25, the youngest of these "typical" immigrants was born in 1897 and had reached age 35 in 1932. Thus, second-generation children born between 1936 and 1945 were unlikely to be the children of two immigrants who arrived in the United States as adults. Parents born in 1906–15 (30 years of age in 1936–45), for example, could not have been adult immigrants before immigration was cut off in 1924, let alone by 1915. Some of these parents arrived with the handful that came later, but most likely arrived before 1924, but as children, members of the "1.5" generation. As adults, they were thus likely to have been more familiar with America than adult immigrant arrivals typically were; not coincidently, they were more likely to marry the native-born. As such, their mixed-origin children were numerous—in the cohort born between 1936 and 1945, for example, the 2.5 generation children (native born of a foreign and a native parent) outnumbered the children of the second generation (native born of two foreign-born parents) nearly 2 to 1. So the second generation members of the latest cohorts of Poles and Italians are anomalous.

The most typical products of the great wave of Polish and Italian immigration were those born between1896 and 1915, and we can safely extend attention to the next cohort, born 1916–25. Those born in the following cohort (1926–35) should be regarded as transitional, and those born in 1936–45 as atypical of the great wave of European immigration (Perlmann 2001a).	These dynamics operate differently in the Mexican population, because the period of immigration is very long, and was especially large in recent decades. In the youngest cohorts, the prevalence of the 2.5 generation drops as the large contemporary immigration results in a large, "true" second generation. Nevertheless, notice that the overall result of these trends: the 2.5 group comprises no less than 40 percent of all native-born children of Mexican immigrants who are young adults today (the 1966–75 birth cohort).6 In most of what follows, I will focus on the "true" second generation members, not the 2.5 group; the educational attainment of the latter group typically lies between that of the second generation and the native whites of native parentage.

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Mexicans Now, Mexicans Then

Consider first the larger historical perspective as it pertains to Mexican-American education. A useful yardstick is the difference between the mean years of schooling that members of an ethnic group—second-generation Italians, Poles, Mexicans, or native-born blacks—received and the mean years of schooling that a benchmark group received—in this case native whites of native parentage (NWNP). Table 2 shows the differences in means during most of the twentieth century.

The major Mexican immigration began after 1910, whereas the major Italian and Polish immigrations began somewhat earlier, so for the first cohort differences are presented only for the European second-generation groups. The older data come from the U. S. censuses of 1940–1970 (the earliest to provide educational attainment, while the latest to identify the second generation); the more recent evidence comes from the CPS for 1998–2001. The two time series are not entirely consistent, but that fact is not relevant to our purposes, because every relevant trend is observable across cohorts within each time series.7

The crucial point to appreciate is that in the early decades of the century, when there were huge second-generation groups of Italians and Poles, and smaller but significant numbers of second-generation Mexicans, the ethnic disadvantage was strikingly greater for Mexicans than for Italians or Poles, for every cohort and for both sexes. The European groups' educational handicap starts fairly low and drops quickly, actually changing direction in the last cohorts (those born after 1926), again, no doubt the result of the data including large numbers of NWNP from places less favored educationally than the urban north. By contrast, the educational handicap of Mexicans starts off high and drops by a significant proportion over time, but remains high for Mexicans born before World War II. In both respects, the pattern resembles that of blacks.

The educational attainment of Mexican immigrant parents were somewhat lower than those of Italian or Polish parents, and this factor would have affected the children; but this difference is surely the least important reason for the huge difference between the educational handicaps of second-generation Mexican Americans and second-generation Italian or Polish Americans (this point is taken up in the appendix). More important are two other factors. First, Mexicans were concentrated in the rural southwest, where expansion of secondary schooling was slow, while Italians and Poles were concentrated in the urban north, where secondary schooling was booming. Second, discrimination against Mexicans in southwestern schools was much more institutionalized than discrimination against Italians and Poles in the cities of the north. In this respect, the Mexican experience was pretty far along the continuum toward the racial experience suffered by southern blacks (Cortes 1980, 709; Olneck and Lazerson 1980, 313–14).

In the more recent cohorts, captured in the CPS data, the picture, while not likely to engender any euphoria, is much less grim. Blacks and second-generation Mexican-Americans differ from NWNP (now limited to non-Hispanic NWNP), by 0.87 to 1.35 years of schooling.8 In the very long run, then, there has been improvement. The educational handicap that second- generation Mexican Americans suffer today is notably smaller than it was during earlier periods of Mexican immigration. And this improvement is found today in the context of great immigration, when one might have concerns about stability of immigrant communities. On the other hand, if the starting point was an educational handicap similar to what southern blacks suffered, then even after much improvement there can still be ample cause for concern. Indeed, the most recent cohorts of Mexican Americans lag further behind the NWNP than the second- generation European groups lagged behind the NWNP during much of the period that can be compared. That is, in male cohorts born after 1905 and in female cohorts born after 1915, the gap separating Poles and Italians from the NWNP was smaller than the one separating the NWNP and Mexicans in the 1966–75 birth cohort.9

Educational Attainments: Poles and Italians Then, Mexicans Now

Differences in means are extremely useful measures; nevertheless, they treat each year of schooling equally, whereas what often matters for educational inequality is completing levels of advanced schooling. In particular, means only opaquely reflect high school dropout rates and college completion rates. I now turn to evidence on these rates, comparing trends "then" (for Italians and Poles) and "now" (for Mexicans).

Of course, educational attainments were much lower in the first third of the 20th century than at the turn of the twenty-first century. One simple comparison can be made by juxtaposing the proportions completing high school then and completing college now (Table 3). In the most recent cohort on which we have information, those people born between 1966 and 1975, one- third of the NWNP completed college (men, 32 percent and women, 34 percent). Now, looking back at high school graduation rates in earlier cohorts, we find a reasonably similar set of proportions for NWNP in the 1896–1905 cohort, born 70 years earlier, with 28 percent of NWNP males and 35 percent of NWNP females graduating from high school. Finally, we can ask: how well were the Poles and Italians doing in comparison to the NWNP in that birth cohort and how well are Mexicans doing in comparison to the NWNP in the most recent birth cohort on which we have evidence? Recall that these are birth cohorts; the earlier birth cohort experienced secondary schooling (or at any rate, reached age 15) during the decade 1911–20 and the latest birth cohort during the decade 1981–90.

It is no surprise that in all three groups, the sons and daughters of immigrants (Italians and Poles then and Mexicans now) lagged behind the sons and daughters of NWNP. Within that punishing context, 15 percent of Italian and 17 percent of Polish men were graduating from high school in the earlier cohort, and 11 percent of the Mexican men are graduation from college today. Although the second-generation group today lags a bit further behind than did the groups then, the NWNP group is a bit further advanced in attainment; thus the ethnic gap between the NWNP and second-generation groups is quite a bit larger today than it was in the early 20th century cohort: 21 vs. 12 percentage points (32 percent for the NWNP vs. 11 percent for Mexicans now and 28 percent for the NWNP vs. 15–17 percent for the Italians and Poles then). Admittedly, the crucial CPS sample of second-generation Mexican-American men is of only moderate size (see Table A2), and the role of sampling variability cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, pending better data, these results suggest a considerable educational gap relative to historical second-generation handicaps, and should be a source for concern and continued attention.

By contrast, Mexican-American women now appear to be faring as well, or even slightly better, than young Polish and Italian women fared then: 13 percent of Mexican women in the latest cohort are completing college, and 10 percent of Polish or Italian women completed high school in the earlier cohort. This gender difference in the Mexican handicap may reflect the pace of transformation in women's roles. That transformation, in other words, is probably farther advanced in Mexican-American communities today than it was in Italian-American or Polish- American communities between 1896 and 1905 due to the wider context of change in both Mexico and the United States during the past three quarters of a century. Put another way, the daughters of Italian and Polish immigrants faced extra hurdles in seeking extended schooling in the early 20th century beyond what was faced by the men then and Mexican-American women face now. Nevertheless, the situation was changing rapidly then. In the next birth cohort (1906–15), Italian and Polish women were, in fact, able to close much of the gap between themselves and men in the same groups.

The comparison of 1896–1905 with 1966–75 birth cohorts seems worthwhile because about the same proportions of the benchmark group were reaching educational thresholds in those years (that is, high school graduation in the earlier and college graduation in the later years). Nevertheless, this comparison also reveals just how tricky numerical "then and now" comparisons can be. In the first place, during the early years of the last century, the birth cohort immediately following 1896–1905 reveals big changes: both the NWNP and the immigrant second-generation children in the 1906–1915 cohort were notably more likely to graduate from high school than had been the case only a decade before. This next cohort reached age 15 between 1921 and 1930, boom years for high school growth in the American urban north. A similar gain in the proportions graduating from college for the next Mexican-American birth cohort (1976–85) over the 1966–1975 cohort seems unlikely. The two birth cohorts compared (1896–1905 and 1966–75) do involve similar proportions crossing a crucial threshold, but that similarity at one moment in time may not imply similar patterns of enrollment in future years. The same point can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, in which high school and college completion rates are plotted for successive cohorts of young Americans. The expansion of American high schools in the early decades of the century was costly for the taxpayers that supported them, and attendance was costly, in foregone earnings at least, for the families that sent an adolescent to these high schools; in that sense there is a reasonable similarity with college expansion and college attendance today. Nevertheless, to note that costs were involved then and are involved now is not to say that the costs either to the society or the family are the same in the two periods. For this and other reasons the pattern of college enrollment growth may well continue to differ from the earlier pattern of high school enrollment growth.

One hint about the near future can be found in the high school completion rates for a group of young people about five years younger than the youngest cohort we have considered thus far. Until now, many of them have not yet completed their schooling, but because they were 20-24 years of age in 1998–2001, those who were still in school were rarely in high school. We therefore can study high-school completion rates in this very young group. Those completion rates suggest no great shifts from the youngest cohort for which we have complete data (those born in 1966–75). Given the scale of immigration in the relevant years and the concerns about segmented assimilation and second-generation decline, it is perhaps heartening that there is no steep decline in high school completion for that young group. However, given the pattern of steep increase in high school graduation observed among Italian and Polish Americans in the cohort born 1906–15, it is also important to say that (judged by high school completion rates thus far) we will probably not see a parallel steep increase in Mexican American college completion in the 1976–85 birth cohort.

Before leaving these comparisons of high school graduation rates, it is worth stressing how misleading it is to speak of the "Hispanic" or "Mexican" educational levels in the United States today, without taking account of the dramatic differences in the educational attainment of immigrants and natives. For example, it can be calculated from the information in Table A2 that among the "Mexican" males in the youngest CPS cohort (born 1966–75), only 54 percent completed high school, a completion rate far below that of other ethnic or racial groups, including native-born blacks. However, it turns out that over half of these young Mexican males are immigrants who came to this country with most or all of their education already behind them; of these men only 36 percent had completed high school. Among the rest, twice as many, 77 percent,10 had graduated from high school. Before dismissing this simple observation as too obvious to deserve attention, the reader should note that the Department of Education's annual survey of education presents "race and ethnic" educational attainment data in just this way; that is, lumping all Hispanics together without distinguishing native-born from foreign-born. Besides other disservices, such a presentation tends to mask the fact that education of "Mexicans" in the United States today is not the same as it was in 1920. These figures mask generational standing and the dynamics of immigrant groups in favor of race and ethnic origin; a future generation will look back on such presentations in much the same way as we look back on the crude figures for European immigrant "races or peoples" that also ignored generational status, or factors such as class origins, in considering children's school attainments.

ETHNICITY, EDUCATION, AND EARNINGS TODAY

On average, earnings rise with years of schooling completed. If we conclude that the evidence on schooling leaves cause for concern, that concerned should be about economic well-being. True, Mexican-American schooling is not as far behind that of NWNP as was the case in the early 20th century, but Mexican Americans are far from equaling NWNP in education. Even in the long perspective, the situation is at best unclear. We have seen that in the past, the NWNP/Italian and NWNP/Pole contrasts in schooling diminished to levels below those of the NWNP/Mexican contrast now, (at least for cohorts of European second-generation men born after 1905 and women born after 1915.) This section makes explicit the link between education and earnings; it relies on the very preliminary 1998–2001 CPS data on the earnings of young adults (born 1966–75). Table 4 shows earnings of men and women in the relevant ethnic groupings. Predictably the higher the level of schooling completed, the greater the earnings for every group at every school level. Mexican-American second-generation members who graduate from college earn roughly 1.6 to 2.4 times more than those who dropped out of high school, even at the young ages shown here.11

Second-generation Mexicans earnings are well above those of immigrants from Mexico with comparable levels of reported schooling (with most of the latter's schooling, presumably received in Mexico). At the other extreme, second generation earnings lag well behind those of the NWNP and are very similar to those of American blacks (for all full-time workers in each group). Because the analysis here relies on CPS data alone, and the number of second- generation Mexican American sample members is dangerously low, too much should not be made of the differences within each educational category. Nevertheless, one point does seem clear: black college graduates earn much more than Mexican graduates, possibly because more black men continued to post-baccalaureate degrees. Smaller proportions of Mexican-American, second-generation women than men work full time, but those that do seem to be doing better than men, particularly when compared to blacks.

There is another dimension to these earnings outcomes that bears on segmented assimilation concerns (see Table 5). Here I concentrate on the men, since they appear most disadvantaged in the earnings picture presented so far.12 Among Mexican Americans, a high proportion (68 percent) of those who failed to complete high school are working full-time. The comparable proportion is somewhat lower among the NWNP (59 percent) and much lower among blacks (46 percent). One way to think about the Mexican pattern of full-time employment among these dropouts, especially compared to that of blacks, is to recall the past experiences of Italian and Polish young men. Many of these European second-generation members, many of whom came from working-class homes, went to work early rather than rely on an extra year of schooling. They knew (or at any rate believed) that much more than an extra year of school would have been required to greatly modify their work options

At the same time, they might have felt they had better job contacts for employment that did not require extended education, even if these jobs paid poorly. Operating on this pattern in 1920–45 may have been a risky strategy for young men coming of age, and operating on it today may well be much riskier still. However, it is still likely to pay off more than a pattern of relatively low education followed by low labor force attachment. In a word, the data on Mexican work patterns do not reveal the prevalence of an inner-city black "underclass" pattern to which it has been compared. The thin evidence from CPS samples will not explain the social and economic dynamics that have created these black-Mexican differences, but this evidence should lead us to be cautious about theories that minimize the differences.

If we extended our consideration to those not only working full-time, but to all young men, the difference between black and Mexican American full-time employment patterns show up in earnings. All Mexican-American high school dropouts (full-time workers and others) are earning 35 percent more than all black high school dropouts ($18,586 vs. $13,726). Recall that among the smaller group of dropouts who work full time, blacks earn more on average, but because so many more Mexican dropouts are employed full-time compared to black dropouts, Mexicans dropouts overall have a decided advantage.

One way to think about the young men most at risk in these two groups—second- generation Mexicans and native blacks—is to ask about the bottom half to three-fifths in each group as judged by their educational attainment. If we concentrate on the bottom two categories of schooling—high school dropouts and those who receive no more than a high school diploma—we include comparable proportions of each group: the lower 55 percent of young black men and the lower 61 percent of young, Mexican-American men. True, twice as high a proportion (23 percent) of Mexicans are in the very lowest educational category as compared to blacks (11 percent), but a comparison involving the lower half of each group is revealing nonetheless. Indeed, segmented assimilation arguments focus the discussion (sensibly enough) less on high school dropouts than on the need for college education in today's labor market. From that point of view, both educational categories considered here are at risk.

In both of these categories, Mexicans are more likely to be working full time; among high school graduates, Mexican full-time workers also earn notably more than black full-time workers. The combination of these two factors results in a sizeable advantage for Mexican men in the lower two educational categories over comparable blacks. Among these 55 percent of all young black men, earnings average $20,393; among the comparable 61 percent of all second- generation Mexican men, earnings average $23,975, an advantage of 18 percent. And this despite the much higher proportion of Mexican dropouts.13 Of course, as noted earlier, the second-generation sample of Mexican men is frustratingly small; by restricting it to the two lower levels of educational attainment, it becomes smaller still. Notice, however, that the same patterns—in terms of the prevalence of full-time employment and income of all in the group—are observed when the 1.5 and 2.5 generations (native-born of mixed parentage) of Mexican American men are compared to blacks. In these 12 comparisons (three Mexican- American groups being compared to blacks, at the two lower educational levels, on two measures), young Mexican men are in more favored positions than blacks in each category.

The point here is not to celebrate the glorious rewards that accrue to Mexican-American high school dropouts. However, we should appreciate that the evidence (and it is still very preliminary evidence) now available suggests that the work and earnings patterns of economically vulnerable Mexican-American young men differ in important ways from the work and earnings patterns of inner-city blacks to whom they have been compared in discussions of future prospects. An alternative paradigm to keep in mind as the future unfolds (for all the changes in the labor market) is the work and earnings pattern of the old European second generation, of working-class Italians and Poles starting out around 1920–45.

APPENDIX

Educational Attainment Differences Across Generations

Another way of comparing school attainments over time highlights the extent to which the second generation overcomes the handicaps of the immigrant generation. First, we compare the difference in mean educational attainments of native whites of native parentage (NWNP) and a particular group of immigrants: Poles, Italians, or Mexicans. We then move forward in time one generation; as operationalized here, we move forward in time to the birth cohort that is 30 years younger. We now compare the difference in mean educational attainment between NWNP and the corresponding second-generation group of Poles, Italians, or Mexicans. The ratio of these two differences in means tell how much of the educational lag in the immigrant generation remained in their children's generation. Thus:

Pedgap = ([Mnwnp – Msecgen]t2) / ([Mnwnp – Mimmig]t1)

where

Pedgap = proportion of the ethnic educational attainment gap remaining after a generation

Mnwnp = mean years of schooling for native whites of native parentage

Msecgen = mean years of schooling for a second-generation group (e.g., Polish American)

t2 = the birth cohort of the NWNP and second-generation members

t1 = the birth cohort 30 years earlier (a generation earlier)

Mimmig = mean years of schooling for an immigrant group (e.g., Poles)

Msecgen were presented for t2 in Table 2. Here the same evidence is used as part of the calculation. (See Table A1a for an example.) In the birth cohort for males, 1886–1895, the average native white of native parentage received 8.57 years of schooling (first panel); the average Polish immigrant born in the same birth cohort received 3.66 fewer years of schooling (second panel). By the time of the cohort born a generation later (1916–25), native white of native parentage males were receiving 10.86 years of schooling and second-generation, Polish males were receiving nearly as much, only 0.32 of a year less. Thus the proportion of the educational gap found in the first generation that was not erased in the second generation was 0.32/3.66, or a mere 9 percent of the original gap.14 We can use the same approach to study the educational progress of blacks across generations (ignoring the immigrant/second-generation feature of the preceding discussion, of course).

The crucial older historical patterns results are clear from the data for each sex (in panels b and c of Table A1a). They confirm the patterns in Table 2, discussed in the text, and show that the new factor added—the educational starting positions of the immigrant generation—do not explain the difference between the Mexican and European groups in the pre–World War II birth cohorts. Poles and Italians in the crucial immigration period (the first three cohorts shown) start off with a great educational handicap, receiving roughly four years of schooling less than the NWNP in the same birth cohorts. Nevertheless, in all three of the crucial second-generation cohorts (as well as in the later ones shown) the children of European immigrants erase most of the gap between themselves and the older stock whites. Only among the earliest second- generation women does the gap exceed 30 percent, and it drops quickly in succeeding cohorts. Among Mexicans, as among blacks, a far higher proportion of the educational gap remains across the generations of the historical cohorts shown in Table A1a (panels b and c).

Table A1b concentrates on the more recent cohorts, relying on a mixture of IPUMS and CPS data. Among those born since World War II, successive cohorts of Mexican Americans do seem to be erasing more of the parental handicap than before. In the two youngest cohorts, the Mexican situation today is roughly comparable to that of Poles and Italians in the birth cohorts of 1906–15 for men and 1916–25 for women. Also, the Mexican-American pattern in these recent cohorts no longer parallels the patterns of blacks, for which this measure shows less progress.15 If anything, the use of this measure suggests a somewhat more optimistic reading of Mexican educational patterns over time than those in the text. However, as noted earlier (in connection with the means found in Table 2), improvement in mean years of schooling does not translate easily into improvement in crossing degree levels of post-secondary schooling, and (in connection with Table 3), the pattern of historical change (such as for Italian men born after 1906–15) will not necessarily be comparable simply because patterns at one moment in time are comparable.

REFERENCES

Cortes, Carlos E. 1980. "Mexicans." In Stephan Thernstrom, ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Current Population Survey (CPS). 1997. Annual Demographic Survey March Supplement: Source and Accuracy. CPS website: www.bls.census.gov/cps/ads/1996/ssrcacc.html. [Author: Lloyd Hicks].

Lieberson, Stanley, and Mary C. Waters. 1988. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Olneck, Michael, and Marvin Lazerson. "Education." In Stephan Thernstrom, ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Perlmann, Joel. 2001a. "Toward a Population History of the Second Generation: Birth Cohorts of Southern-, Central-, and Eastern-European Origins, 1871–1970." Working Paper No. 333. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Levy Economics Institute.

———. 2001b. "Young Mexican-Americans, Blacks, and Native-Parentage Whites in Recent Years: Schooling, Teen Motherhood and Work Status as Indicators of Strengths and Risks." Working Paper No. 335. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Levy Economics Institute.

———. 2002. "Poles and Italians then, Mexicans Now? Immigrant-to-Native Wage Ratios, 1910 and 1940." Working Paper No. 343. Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Levy Economics Institute.

Perlmann, Joel, and Roger Waldinger.1996. "The Second Generation and the Children of the Native Born: Comparisons and Refinements." Working Paper No. 174. Annandale-on- Hudson, N.Y.: The Levy Economics Institute

———. 1997. "Second Generation Decline? Children of Immigrants, Past and Present: A Reconsideration." International Migration Review 120: 31 (Winter).

Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben Rumbaut.1996. Immigrant America (2nd edition). Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

———, eds. 2001. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Portes, Alejandro, and Min Zhou. 1993. "The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and its Variants among Post-1965 Immigrant Youth." Annals 530: 74–96.

Waldinger, Roger, and Joel Perlmann. 1998. "Second Generations: Past, Present, Future." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24: 1.