Immigrants' Socioeconomic Mobility: The Case of the American Jews

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Immigration and Religion

Abstract

Today, American Jews are at the top of the economic ladder, making more and having the same amount of education, or even more, than the members of America’s oldest religious denominations – the “gate keepers,” Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists and the like. However, most of America’s Jews did not enter the US at the same time as these other groups – most of them entered during the immigration wave of late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As such, most American Jews immigrated to the US at approximately the same time as the major wave of Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants. But, their economic and social mobility has far surpassed these groups. This paper seeks to explain why. We find that, contrary to most popular explanations, Jews have not been more upwardly mobile. They experienced an average amount of upward mobility compared to other immigrant groups, but started out with more resources in the first generation. Given the role of Jewish immigrants in debates surrounding immigrant assimilation and mobility theory, explaining the mechanism of Jewish socioeconomic mobility is critical to understanding immigrant trajectories in general.

Authors

• Rachel Ellis, University of Pennsylvania

• Melissa J. Wilde, University of Pennsylvania

• Kristin Geraty, North Central College

• Stephen R. Viscelli, Swarthmore College