Abstract
This chapter uses a variety of census and survey data to develop the first systematic time series comparing the occupational distribution of adult male Jews and white non-Jews by nativity from 1890 to 1990. A shorter time series is presented for earnings. The decennial census has never asked religion. Indirect Jewish identifiers are used for the census and survey data without direct Jewish identifiers.
The analysis shows the development of Jewish occupational attainment (relative to white non-Jews) from the primarily sales and clerical occupations of the German Jews of the late nineteenth century, to the operative and craft occupations of the turn-of-the-century Eastern European and Russian Jewish immigrants, to the mid-twentieth century concentration in sales and managerial occupations, to the late twentieth century concentration of American-born Jews in the high income professional occupations. The extent and nature of Jewish self-employment also changed over the period, from small-scale managerial self-employment to professional self-employment. Analysis of data on the earnings of white men over this period (1909–1980’s) shows a consistent pattern of significantly higher earnings among Jews than among non-Jews, even when educational attainment and other demographic characteristics are the same.
The analysis demonstrates a more rapid improvement in economic status for Jews than for other white men, both within the turn-of-the-century immigrant generation (intragenerational mobility) and from fathers to sons throughout the twentieth century (intergenerational mobility). The inequality in the Jewish occupational distribution first widened and then narrowed as a result of the intragenerational and intergenerational mobility.
Revision of the original article published in Contemporary Jewry, 20(1), 1999, pp. 68–98.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, June 1993, the Midwest Jewish Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, January 1995, and the Conference on the Economics of Judaism and Jewish Observance, Bar-llan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, December 1998. The number of data points increased in successive presentations! I appreciate comments received from Carmel U. Chiswick, Lloyd Gartner, Rela Geffen, Melvin Holli, Tikva Leeker, Evelyn Lehrer, Burton Weisbrod, and participants at the conference presentations, but I am responsible for all errors of omission or commission. I especially appreciate the research assistance of Michael Hurst, Gaston Repetto and Yin Yang.
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Notes
- 1.
For a recent study of the interaction between the economic progress and religious practice of turn-of-the century Jewish immigrants, see C. Chiswick 1999.
- 2.
Readers interested in the technical details are referred to the original
research papers listed in the references for a further discussion of most of the individual cross-sectional data.
- 3.
See U.S. Bureau of the Census (1989) for a facsimile of the decennial census questionnaires from 1790 to 1990.
- 4.
In principle, the “distinctive Jewish name” technique could also be applied to the original census manuscript records for 1920 and earlier censuses, which are available 72 years after the census is conducted. This approach is costly and is not without significant error. See, for example, Sheskin 1998.
- 5.
In the 1910 Census the mother tongue question was not on the census form, but enumerators were instructed to record in the same space as birthplace the mother tongue of any foreign born respondent or foreign-born parent of the respondent (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1989).
- 6.
This was originally published prior to the creation of the 1860 Census PUMS file used in Chap. 2 of this volume where Jews are identified using the Distinctive Jewish Name (DJN) technique.
- 7.
Both techniques as well as other techniques are used in Ritterband’s (1998) estimate of the New York Jewish population over the twentieth century.
- 8.
The 1890 survey of Jews relied on lists of Jews provided by “presidents and rabbis of congregations in different parts of the country” (Billings 1890, p.3). This would result in an undersampling of non-affiliated Jews and, in particular, Jews living in rural and smaller communities where they would not have contact with officials of congregations and other Jewish institutions. Moreover, it is not clear from the report if the congregations and the names on the lists they provided were “randomly” sampled. For an analysis of the Billings Report survey and the data on occupation, see Chapter 3 or Chiswick (2001).
- 9.
An extensive search has failed to find the original data used in the Billings Report. No nationwide microdata file can be created from the 1890 Census because fire destroyed most of the original manuscript records (Blake 1996).
- 10.
The text reports data on the nativity and duration in the U.S. of the family heads: 12.5 percent were born in the U.S., 77.8 percent were foreign born who had been in the U.S. 15 or more years, 2.1 percent from 10 to 15 years, 5.2 percent from 5 to 10 years, 1.2 percent under 5 years, and for 1.2 percent duration in the U.S. was unknown (Billings 1890, p. 5).
- 11.
Using data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, based on the difference in responses to the questions on current religion and religion at birth, it is found that among men those who left Judaism are more highly educated and those who became Jewish are less highly educated than those born Jewish who remained Jewish (Chiswick 1997).
- 12.
A similar situation exists using the 1890 Census. For all other data sources identified Jews are deleted from the total sample to obtain the data on “non-Jews,” which includes non-Jews and unidentified Jews.
- 13.
The adult GSS respondents were not asked their father’s earnings when they were youths. There were no questions on earnings in the censuses prior to 1940 or in the special 1890 survey of Jews. The income data in the 1950 and 1960 Censuses are not studied in this paper.
- 14.
The NJPS 2000 included asking respondents their individual labor market earnings and occupation, in addition to the household’s income.
- 15.
For an interesting article on the middle class status of German Jewish women in the U.S. in the 1890’s, see Berrol 1985.
- 16.
Data on the schooling attainment of adults are not available in the censuses and surveys prior to the 1940 Census. Data are available, however, on the schooling attainment of the parents of the respondents in the General Social Survey.
- 17.
When the analysis is performed separately by nativity, other variables being the same, the earnings differential between Jews and non-Jews is larger among the foreign born (coefficient = 0.111, t-ratio = 5.0) than among the native born (coefficient = 0.055, t-ratio = 2.0), although the difference in the coefficients by nativity is not statistically significant (t-ratio = l.59). Among the foreign born, other variables the same, the earnings of Jews were higher than those from the British Isles (2.9 percent) and Canada (4.2 percent), but these differences were not significant. For all other immigrant origins the differences were large and significant. Even in an analysis limited to those living in the New York Metropolitan Area, Jewish earnings exceeded those of non-Jews (coefficient = 0.076, t-ratio = 3.2) due in part to the higher earnings of Jewish immigrants (coefficient = 0.111, t-ratio = 3.5), other things being the same.
- 18.
For an analysis of differences in schooling and occupational attainment between Jewish men and women, see Hartman and Hartman (1996).
- 19.
This does not control for occupation, which is an alternative to earnings as a measure of labor market attainment. When occupational attainment and self-employment status are also held constant, the earnings advantage of Jews in the 1970 Census analysis declines from 16 percent to l0 percent. If the analysis is limited to those living in urban areas inside Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) in New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut, without the statistical control for occupation and self-employment, Jews earn 8 percent more than non-Jews. Thus, even with a statistical control for occupation, self-employment status and living in the New York metropolitan area, all of which are endogenous, it appears that Jews still have higher earnings than white non-Jews.
- 20.
For a comparative analysis of Jewish household income from 1969 to 1989, see Walters and Wilder (1997).
- 21.
This achievement among Diaspora Jews in the twentieth century does not seem to be limited to the United States. Rather, it seems to be a widespread success story. See, for example, Darvish (1985), Elazar with Medding (1983), Kahan (1986), Kuznets (1966), Prais and Schmool (1975), and Syrquin (1985).
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Chiswick, B.R. (2020). The Occupational Attainment and Earnings of American Jewry, 1890 to 1990. In: Chiswick, B. (eds) Jews at Work. Studies of Jews in Society, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41243-2_6
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