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取得了巨大的进步。然而，两代人之间的进步似乎在第二代人之后就停滞了，之后的几代人只观察到适度的进步。最终的结果是，即使是第三代及以上的墨西哥人（即墨西哥移民的孙辈和后来的后代）在经济地位上也落后于美国人的平均水平，这一差距令人不安。然而，这些代际比较的有效性是建立在对种族认同的假设之上的，而对墨西哥裔美国人来说，这种假设很少受到审查。特别是，对代际变化的分析通常假设墨西哥移民后代所做的种族选择不会扭曲代际比较的结果。例如，如果后代中最成功的墨西哥人更有可能通婚，或者出于其他原因不再将自己或子女视为墨西哥裔，那么现有数据可能低估了第二代和后代之间的教育和收入增长，也可能夸大了晚期墨西哥裔美国人与其他美国人之间的经济差距。利用2000年美国人口普查和近年来的当前人口调查的微观数据，该研究将探讨影响个人是否选择将自己（或其子女）认定为墨西哥裔的因素，以及这些种族选择如何影响对墨西哥裔美国人代际进步的推断。具体而言，本项目将：(1)使用人口普查数据分析异族婚姻在墨西哥裔父母及其16-17岁美国出生的年轻人之间人力资本和种族认同的代际传递中的作用；(2)比较CPS中墨西哥后裔的客观和主观指标，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的种族流失程度和选择性；(3)构建人口预测模型，以墨西哥移民群体为研究对象，模拟选择性通婚与人力资本和种族认同的亲子传递之间的相互作用，从而得出结果和墨西哥人身份的代际联合分布。

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.