Nathaniel Hilger - Brown University
What Do 'Model' Minorities Teach Us About Overcoming Disadvantage? The Case of Asian-Americans
Date: 03/01/2016 (Tue)
Time: 3:15pm- 4:45pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Social Sciences 111
Organizer: Hugh Macartney, Ph.D.
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
10:00am - Hugh Macartney (SS 239)
10:30am - Xiao Yu Wang
11:00am - Chris Timmins
11:30am - Maria Zhu
12:00pm - Lunch with Pat Bayer
1:00pm - Rob Garlick
1:30pm - Joshua Rasmussen
2:00pm - John Singleton
2:30pm - Marjorie McElroy
3:15pm - Seminar Presentation (3:15pm to 4:45pm)
5:00pm - Yulya Truskinovsky
5:45pm - Dinner with Hugh Macartney, Modibo Sidibe
Additional Comments: Abstract: Asian-Americans (“Asians”) experienced systematic discrimination resembling a Jim Crow regime over the 19th and early 20th centuries, yet by 1960 native-born Asians had attained white income levels while blacks still lagged far behind. How did Asians achieve this? I first establish that Asians, blacks and whites can only be meaningfully compared in one state: California. Using pseudo-panels I find that Asian dynasties exhibit rapid intergenerational growth consistent with higher steady-state group income in every cohort born in California after 1920. While a popular narrative suggests that Asians achieved success through greater investments in education, a simple decomposition reveals a larger role for gains in Asian earnings conditional on education. WWII enlistment test score records reveal that the large earnings disadvantage of earlier Asian cohorts likely reflected prejudice or misperception rather than skills, in sharp contrast with blacks. Asian-American history therefore represents a case study in which non-statistical labor market discrimination against a high-skilled group did not persist.