Intermarrige, Ethnic Identity and the Generational Progress of Mexican Americans

描述(由申请人提供)：墨西哥移民和他们在美国出生的孩子在教育程度和收入方面都有了显著的提高。然而，在第二代之后，代际进步似乎停滞不前，后代只有小幅增长。最终的结果是，即使是第三代和更高一代的墨西哥人(即墨西哥移民的孙子和后来的后代)在经济地位上也落后于美国平均水平，这一数字令人不安。然而，这些代际比较的有效性取决于关于种族认同的假设，而墨西哥裔美国人对这些假设的审查相对较少。特别是，对代际变化的分析通常假设，墨西哥移民后代做出的种族选择不会扭曲世代之间的结果比较。例如，如果后几代最成功的墨西哥人更有可能通婚，或者因为其他原因不再认为自己或他们的孩子是墨西哥血统，那么现有数据可能会低估第二代和后几代之间的教育和收入增长，也可能夸大后一代墨西哥裔美国人与其他美国人之间的经济差距。利用2000年美国人口普查和最近几年人口调查的微观数据，这项拟议的研究将探索哪些因素影响个人是否选择将自己(或他们的孩子)身份识别为墨西哥裔，以及这些种族选择可能如何影响对墨西哥裔美国人代际进步的推断。具体地说，这个项目将：(1)使用人口普查数据分析通婚在墨西哥裔父母及其16-17岁的美国出生的青年之间的人力资本代际传递和种族认同中所起的作用；(2)比较CPS中关于墨西哥血统的客观和主观指标，以分析第一代和第二代墨西哥成年人以及第一代、第二代和第三代墨西哥青年中种族磨耗的程度和选择性；(3)构建一个人口预测模型，该模型从一群墨西哥移民开始，模拟选择性通婚如何与人力资本的亲子传递和种族认同相互作用，产生世代之间的结果和墨西哥身份的联合分布。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Dramatic improvements in educational attainment and earnings occur between Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Intergenerational progress seems to stall after the second generation, however, with only modest gains observed for later generations. The end result is that even third- and higher-generation Mexicans (i.e., the grandchildren and later descendants of Mexican immigrants) trail the average American in economic status by a disturbing amount. The validity of these intergenerational comparisons, however, rests on assumptions about ethnic identification that have received relatively little scrutiny for Mexican Americans. In particular, analyses of intergenerational change typically assume that the ethnic choices made by the descendants of Mexican immigrants do not distort outcome comparisons across generations. For example, if the most successful Mexicans in later generations are more likely to intermarry or for other reasons cease to identify themselves or their children as Mexican-origin, then available data may understate education and earnings gains between the second and later generations, and may also overstate the economic gap between late-generation Mexican Americans and other Americans. Using microdata from the 2000 U.S. Census and from recent years of the Current Population Survey, the proposed research will explore what factors influence whether individuals choose to identify themselves (or their children) as Mexican-origin, and how these ethnic choices may affect inferences about the intergenerational progress of Mexican Americans. Specifically, this project will: (1) use Census data to analyze the role that intermarriage plays in the intergenerational transmission of human capital and ethnic identification between Mexican-origin parents and their U.S.-born youth ages 16-17; (2) compare objective and subjective indicators of Mexican descent in the CPS to analyze the extent and selectivity of ethnic attrition among first- and second-generation Mexican adults and among first-, second-, and third-generation Mexican youth; and (3) construct a population projection model that starts with a cohort of Mexican immigrants and simulates how selective intermarriage interacts with the parent-child transmission of human capital and ethnic identification to produce the joint distributions of outcomes and Mexican identity across generations.