## People in Economics — Leah Platt Boustan

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### Background and intellectual formation
- Grew up with family stories of immigration; interviewed great-uncle Joe about a forebear who immigrated from Russia in 1891, began selling goods from a pushcart, and opened a store.
- Undergraduate at Princeton; junior and senior thesis advisor Henry Farber introduced her to the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth.
- Spent a year after college working at the American Prospect.
- Pursued a doctorate in economics on a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; studied at Harvard under Claudia Goldin.
- PhD thesis: “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.”
- First book: Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets, published in 2017.

### Research methods and data sources
- Collaboration with Ran Abramitzky began after meeting at a conference in San Marino, California.
- Developed computer algorithms that linked census data across generations using Ancestry.com, enabling study of immigrants’ children and grandchildren.
- Used thousands of interviews from the Ellis Island Oral History Project and conducted original surveys to contextualize quantitative findings.
- Early joint work includes “Europe’s Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses: Self-Selection and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration,” published in 2012.

### Major empirical findings
- Analysis of decades of US census data shows children of recent arrivals from countries such as Guatemala or Nigeria do just as well as children of immigrants from Italy, Norway, or Russia in the 19th century.
- The first generation of immigrants generally does no better economically than native-born peers; the rags-to-riches myth is not supported by the data.
- Upward mobility is incremental; second-generation immigrants close the earnings gap with native-born Americans.
- Immigrants today assimilate at similar rates to past immigrants:
  - Learn English just as quickly.
  - Are just as likely to leave immigrant residential enclaves.
  - Are even more likely to marry a member of another national or ethnic group.
- Immigrant labor generally does not displace native-born workers:
  - Many immigrants concentrate on work that doesn’t require English-language proficiency (examples cited: landscaping, construction), while native-born workers fill customer-facing roles.
  - Low-skilled immigrant workers can be complements to higher-skilled native workers (example: dishwashers versus waiters in a restaurant).
  - Immigrants often start businesses (restaurant, medical practice) that create jobs for others.
  - Immigrant provision of services such as cooking, cleaning, or childcare can free time for native-born Americans and raise their productivity.
- Historical study of roughly 1.5 million Russian Jews who immigrated in decades before World War I examined the interplay between religious persecution and opportunities in the US.

### Policy implications and recommendations
- Research supports taking a long view on immigration policy: if immigrant success is accepted as occurring over time, there is no need to preselect immigrants based on skills or education as done by countries such as Australia and Canada.
- Acknowledged counterargument: Reihan Salam (Manhattan Institute) favors more selective immigration to boost productivity and avoid short-term social frictions and fiscal costs associated with low-skilled immigrants (examples of potential fiscal needs: subsidized housing or health care).

### Professional collaboration and career notes
- Abramitzky and Boustan have produced a dozen papers over more than a decade challenging common assumptions about immigration (e.g., job displacement, assimilation speed).
- Coauthored the 2022 book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, intended for a broader audience.
- Both have received dissertation prizes: Boustan received the 2006 Economic History Association prize for best dissertation in American history; Abramitzky received the prize for best dissertation in non-US history.
- Abramitzky is senior associate dean of the social sciences at Stanford; his wife Noya ran the local Hebrew school.
- Boustan is director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton; she is married to Ra’anan Boustan, a research scholar in the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton.
- Both couples have three children.
- Current project: immigration to Europe with a team of 37 coauthors.

### Selected dates and numeric facts (verbatim)
- MARCH 2025
- 1.5 million Russian Jews (immigrants in decades before World War I)
- 1891 (year an ancestor immigrated from Russia)
- 2016 (US presidential election campaign period referenced)
- 2022 (publication year of Streets of Gold)
- 2007 (year Boustan’s first immigration paper was published)
- 2012 (publication year of joint article on age of mass migration)
- 2017 (publication year of Boustan’s first book)
- 2006 (year Boustan received the Economic History Association prize)
- 2018 (publication year of Reihan Salam’s book cited)
- 37 coauthors (on the Europe immigration project)
- Three children (for each couple)

*Source: F&D — People in Economics profile of Leah Platt Boustan (MARCH 2025).*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/03/pie.pdf_