| At the turn of the twentieth century, dynamic growth in the United States had led to an increased demand for labor. This demand was met primarily by migrants - consisting of people who migrated from overseas in search for a better life and/or people who migrated from within the United States to cities experiencing rapid growth. This dissertation is concerned with the consequences of such migration on the economic outcomes of migrants. In the first paper, 'Immigrant Occupational Mobility in Early Twentieth Century United States,' I look at occupational mobility of international migrants in the United States to assess whether these migrants were assimilating over time. Using multinomial logit models, I find that immigrants were, over time, moving into farming, a move down the occupational ladder. In the second paper, 'Occupational Gains to Urban Frontier Migration, Early Twentieth Century: A Longitudinal Analysis,' I look at internal migrants. In particular, I look at gains to migrating (relative to an option of not migrating) to the rapidly growing cities in the west: Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland. Controlling for self-selection, I find that migrants did better (in terms of income gains) than people who did not migrate. |
