Whether immigrants and their descendants are catching up socioeconomically with the rest of society is a fundamental question in the study of immigrant assimilation. In this paper, we examine the progress that Hispanic immigrant men make catching up with the earnings of later-generation Whites across generations. We rely on data from multiple years of the Current Population Survey linked with individuals’ tax earnings. This unique dataset allows us to overcome some important limitations of previous studies that employ a synthetic generation approach in which individuals born approximately one generation earlier are used as proxies for actual parents. Our matching strategy also enables us to identify the exact third generation and evaluate the contribution of ethnic attrition to estimates of intergenerational mobility. Second-generation Hispanic men are found to experience lower mobility than later-generation Whites for most values of parental earnings. However, their lower mobility can be explained by their immigrant parents’ lower education levels. In contrast, third-generation Hispanic men experience lower mobility even after accounting for parental education and ethnic attrition. This finding is consistent with a stalling or reversal in the socioeconomic progress of Hispanics beyond the second generation.

中文翻译：

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西班牙裔男性移民世代之间的收入流动性：使用税务记录进行的估计

移民及其后代在社会经济上是否正在赶上社会其他人，是移民同化研究的一个基本问题。在本文中，我们研究了几代西班牙裔移民男性的收入在追赶后代白人方面取得的进展。我们依赖与个人税收收入相关的多年当前人口调查的数据。这个独特的数据集使我们能够克服以前研究的一些重要局限性，这些研究采用合成生成方法，其中大约早一代出生的个体被用作实际父母的代理。我们的匹配策略还使我们能够确定确切的第三代，并评估种族消耗对代际流动性估计的贡献。研究发现，就父母收入的大部分价值而言，第二代西班牙裔男性的流动性低于下一代白人。然而，他们的流动性较低可以用其移民父母的教育水平较低来解释。相比之下，即使考虑到父母教育和种族流失，第三代西班牙裔男性的流动性也较低。这一发现与第二代之后西班牙裔社会经济进步的停滞或逆转是一致的。