Stanford celebrates Ran Abramitzky's studies of immigration

 The Stanford Daily interviews Ran Abramitzky, on the occasion of his winning a Guggenheim fellowship:

Guggenheim fellow Ran Abramitzky sees the American Dream as an ‘intergenerational story’  By Angikar Ghosal

"TSD: Your research program combines economic history, big linked microdata and policy relevance. Where do you see the next frontier for this kind of long-run, data-driven immigration research?

RA: A key frontier is linking together large-scale datasets to follow individuals and families over time and across space.

Much of my work relies on linking millions of individuals across U.S. censuses to study mobility across generations. The next step is to connect these data to other sources — such as college records, administrative data, and historical archives — to better understand how specific institutions shape economic outcomes.

For example, we are digitizing and linking records for millions of college students and faculty from over 100 institutions and connecting them to census data to study how socioeconomic background shapes access to higher education and elite professions.

Another frontier is using new tools, including AI and large language models, to systematically analyze large bodies of text — such as congressional speeches — to better understand how policies and public narratives around immigration evolve over time.

TSD: Given the current political moment around immigration policy, what do you most wish the public understood from the historical evidence?

RA: A key lesson from the historical evidence is that immigrant mobility is a long-term, often intergenerational process.

Many immigrants initially work in manual or low-paying jobs and do not move quickly from poverty to prosperity. However, their children often experience substantial upward mobility despite a challenging start.

What I think is often missing in today’s policy debate is this long-term perspective. Discussions tend to focus on newly arrived immigrants and their short-run outcomes. But historically, much of the economic success of immigrant families has occurred in the next generation.

A more long-term view would recognize these patterns and the contributions of immigrants and their children, and could lead to policies that are more supportive of immigrant integration and opportunity."