Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An Economic History of Hispanic Migration and Assimilation

这项研究研究了波多黎各人在第二次世界大战后的几十年里向美国大陆的迁移。由于这一时期的移民，波多黎各人目前是东海岸城市中最大的西班牙裔人口，总体上是美国第二大西班牙裔群体。虽然波多黎各人自1917年以来一直是美国公民，但他们与拉丁美洲其他国家有许多共同的文化和经济特征。因此，更好地了解这一历史时期为了解拉丁美洲移民网络和未来趋势提供了一个窗口，拉丁美洲是战后时期最大的移民来源国。研究者使用了1948年至1991年间提交给美国大陆波多黎各公共职业介绍所的就业申请数据，以更好地了解那些选择移民的人的技能水平，衡量移民经济地位的变化，并分析移民到达后的英语习得和教育程度的过程。构建的数据集将有助于填补历史知识的空白，本研究结果将对移民研究产生广泛的影响。这项研究的目标是美国波多黎各政府办事处收集的特殊数据。通过新创建的数据集，本研究跟踪了移民的结果，并使用了移民在波多黎各的原籍城市、抵达美国的日期以及在波多黎各和美国工作的回顾性就业历史等信息。分析分为三个部分。首先，关于移民的起源、到达和目的地的信息允许评估网络规模与移民自我选择之间的关系，因为网络随着时间的推移而发展。其次，通过比较移民在美国的第一份工资与他/她在波多黎各的最后一份工资来衡量移民的短期回报，而随后的工资则用于评估与本地人的趋同程度，并确定美国工资增长的决定因素。第三，波多黎各移民表面上缓慢的同化被重新审视，使用抵达美国后关于英语习得和教育程度的新信息，并利用数据的纵向维度，这减少了选择性返回移民带来的偏见。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research studies the migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland United States in the decades following World War II. As a result of migration in this period, Puerto Ricans are currently the largest Hispanic population in cities of the Eastern seaboard and overall the second largest Hispanic group in the US. Although Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since 1917, they share many cultural and economic characteristics with the rest of Latin America. Thus, a better understanding of this historical period provides a window into migrant networks and future trends in migration from Latin America, the largest source of immigrants in the postwar era. The investigator uses data from employment applications submitted between 1948 and 1991 to a Puerto Rican public employment agency in the mainland US to better understand the skill level of those who chose to migrate, measure changes in the economic status of migrants, and analyze migrants' process of English acquisition and educational attainment after arrival. The dataset constructed will help to fill in gaps in historical knowledge, and the results of this research will have broad impacts on the study of migration.The research targets the exceptional data collections from the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States. With the newly created dataset, this research tracks migrant outcomes and uses information on the migrants' municipality of origin in Puerto Rico, date(s) of arrival in the US, and retrospective employment history for work both in Puerto Rico and the US. The analysis is divided into three sections. First, information on migrants' origin, arrival, and destination allows for assessment of the relationship between network size and migrant self-selection as networks evolve over time. Second, the short-run return to migration is measured by comparing the first wage of a migrant in the US to his/her last wage in Puerto Rico, while subsequent wages are used to assess convergence to natives and identify determinants of wage growth in the US. Third, the ostensible slow assimilation of Puerto Rican migrants is reexamined using new information on English acquisition and educational attainment after arrival in the US and by exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the data, which reduces the bias introduced by selective return migration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.