Hi everyone! This is Ran Abramitzky from Stanford and Leah Boustan from Princeton. We are economics professors and economic historians. We recently published a book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success. Proof.

Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American public life. Streets of Gold uses big data and ten years of pioneering research to provide new evidence about the past and present of the American Dream.

Turning to the data provides a new take on American history with surprising results:

• Upward Mobility: Children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of U.S.-born residents – a pattern that has held for more than a century.
• Rapid Assimilation: Immigrants accused of lack of assimilation (such as Mexicans today and the Irish in the past) actually assimilate fastest.
• Helps U.S. Born: Closing the door to immigrants harms the economic prospects of the U.S.-born—the people politicians are trying to protect.

Streets of Gold weaves together the data with powerful stories of immigrants from a century ago and today. In building historical data on immigrant lives, we acted like dedicated family genealogists – but millions of times over.

Happy to answer questions about immigration, past and present, or about our earlier work on the Israeli kibbutz (Ran) or the Great Black Migration (Leah). Also interested in your thoughts about US economic history more broadly, or about academia and career advice for younger scholars.

Ask Us Anything! We'll be collecting questions this morning and then start responding at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific.

Edit: Ran and I have to log off at 3pm Eastern for another meeting. But we can come back later to check on any questions that are posted after we leave. Thanks for the great chat!