Immigrant Intergenerational Mobility: Effect of Parental Income Trajectory

This paper contributes to the literature on immigrant mobility in the US context by examining how immigrant parents' income trajectory impacts the early-career income and educational achievement of their children. Through analyzing a custom-built panel dataset made of two immigrant cohorts, I hope to estimate the effect of parental income growth rate on the children's outcomes. To achieve this, I utilize the OLS slope of both parents' income over time to operationalize the rate of change during the child's development, controlling for a range of individual and family factors. Under the "role model" hypothesis, an upward income trajectory of immigrant parents can signal successful integration and provide motivation for the second generation. However, common sociological barriers such as social class may still limit the mobility of immigrant children. After a comprehensive analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I did not observe a robust effect of parental income trajectory that spans the first 18 years of child growth. However, evidence suggests that parental income growth during teenage years can potentially have a positive influence on total years of schooling completed by the child. Average parental income appears to be a much more reliable predictor of child outcomes, pointing to a stratification of social class within the immigrant community.