Abstract
We investigate three forms of human capital investment—English proficiency, job changes, and formal classroom education. We measure these for the cohort of immigrant men who entered the U.S. in 1975–1980. We measure initial levels using the 1980 census and growth rates using the difference between levels in the 1980 and 1990 census. Generally, we find that the percentage of proficient English speakers for Asians grew more than the corresponding gain for West European immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. With time in the U.S., immigrant men from Asian developing countries move to white collar and professional occupations more often than similar men from Europe. Finally, we find that for most groups of immigrant men from Asian developing countries, ages 25–34, enrollment rates in school are more than double the rates of otherwise similar European immigrants in 1980; this pattern persists ten years later. All three factors point to higher human capital investment among immigrants from Asian developing countries.
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Notes
- 1.
English proficiency investment would necessarily be greater for the Asian immigrants.
- 2.
- 3.
The Asian groups that we study in Parts II through IV include few refugees. In contrast, during the Cold War, and up until the mid-1990s, many U.S. refugees came from the former Soviet Union. Two factors work against enclave creation for refugees. One is a U.S. policy of geographically dispersing refugees. The other is that refugee migration often arises from a sudden change.
- 4.
Refer to Cortes (2004).
- 5.
Further work is needed to see if these cross-sectional results hold with longitudinal data or with following cohorts across cross-sections.
- 6.
Doing this is problematic since the method by which the census measures schooling achievement changed between 1980 and 1990. The 1980 census measured schooling achievement by years completed; the 1990 census measures the attainment of certain levels of schooling, such as the receipt of a high school diploma. Furthermore, such comparisons have to be limited to comparisons above or below a certain point. Otherwise, one is faced with the difficulty of interpreting situations such as a simultaneous decrease in those with a college degree and an increase in those with a graduate degree.
- 7.
There is a large literature by sociologists and historians concerning what leads certain groups to follow certain strategies. See, for instance, Portes (1995a, b), Portes and Bach (1985), Portes and Jensen (1987), Portes and Mozo (1985), Portes and Rumbaut (1996), Portes and Stepick (1985), and Portes and Truelove (1987), Portes and Zhou (1993) and D. Reimers (2005).
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Duleep, H., Regets, M.C., Sanders, S., Wunnava, P.V. (2020). Human Capital Investment. In: Human Capital Investment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47083-8_9
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