{
  "title": "Leah Boustan: Debunking Myths",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/03/people-in-economics-debunking-myths-chris-wellisz",
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  "summary": "Chris Wellisz profiles Princeton’s Leah Boustan, who uses ancestry data to test commonly held beliefs",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Background and intellectual trajectory",
      "content": "- Childhood and family influence: high school trip from Boston to Chicago to interview great-uncle Joe; family story of immigration from Russia in 1891 and economic advancement from pushcart to storeowner.\n- Early inspirations: Stephen Spielberg’s interviews with Holocaust survivors in the mid-1990s spurred interest in genealogy.\n- Academic path:\n  - Undergraduate at Princeton; junior and senior thesis advisor Henry Farber.\n  - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for doctorate in economics.\n  - PhD at Harvard University under Claudia Goldin.\n  - Dissertation: “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.”\n- Career highlights:\n  - First published paper on immigration and religious persecution, studying some 1.5 million Russian Jews in the decades before World War I (published in 2007).\n  - First book: Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (published in 2017).\n  - Collaboration with Ran Abramitzky beginning with joint article “Europe’s Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses: Self-Selection and Economic Outcomes in the Age of Mass Migration” (published in 2012).\n  - Coauthored book for general audience: Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success (published in 2022).\n  - Administrative roles: director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton; Abramitzky became senior associate dean of the social sciences at Stanford.\n- Personal: Boustan is married to Ra’anan Boustan; both couples have three children."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Data, methods, and research collaboration",
      "content": "- Data sources and methods:\n  - Decades of US census data linked across generations using computer algorithms.\n  - Ancestry.com used as a priceless source of genealogical data; collaboration formalized after contact from Ancestry.com’s lawyer.\n  - Oral histories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project and original surveys conducted by the researchers.\n- Research collaboration:\n  - Longstanding intellectual partnership with Ran Abramitzky; describe themselves as thinking about the world “quite similarly.”\n  - Collaborative model includes bringing graduate students into projects; large-scale projects can involve many coauthors (next project has 37 coauthors)."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Key empirical findings and themes from Boustan’s work",
      "content": "- Intergenerational mobility:\n  - First-generation immigrants generally do no better economically than native-born peers; the rags-to-riches story is characterized as a myth.\n  - Upward mobility is incremental; the second generation closes the earnings gap with native-born Americans.\n  - Counter to personal priors, children of recent arrivals from Guatemala or Nigeria do just as well as children of immigrants from Italy, Norway, or Russia in the 19th century.\n- Assimilation and integration:\n  - Immigrants today learn English just as quickly as in the past.\n  - Immigrants today are just as likely to leave immigrant residential enclaves.\n  - Immigrants today are even more likely to marry outside their national or ethnic group.\n  - Conclusion: today’s immigrants try just as hard to embrace American culture as earlier cohorts.\n- Labor market effects:\n  - Research challenges the assumption that immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans.\n  - Where overlap exists, competition tends to be among workers who do the same jobs (often other recent immigrants).\n  - Immigrants concentrate in work that does not require English-language proficiency (examples: landscaping, construction); native-born workers more often fill customer-facing roles.\n  - Low-skilled and high-skilled workers can be complements rather than substitutes (example: restaurant where low-skilled perform dishwashing and high-skilled serve as waiters).\n  - Immigrant entrepreneurship creates jobs (examples: restaurants, medical practices).\n  - Immigrant-provided services (cooking, cleaning, childcare) free up time for native-born Americans and can increase native-born productivity."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Public engagement and policy implications",
      "content": "- Transition from academic to public audience:\n  - Dozen papers over more than a decade addressed academic assumptions about immigration.\n  - Surge in public debate around the 2016 US presidential election prompted outreach to a broader audience, leading to a nonfiction book in 2022.\n- Policy recommendations and perspective:\n  - Advocates taking a long view on immigration: immigrant success accrues over time.\n  - Argues that long-term outcomes reduce the need to preselect immigrants on skills or education, contrasting with selective systems used by countries such as Australia and Canada.\n- Counterarguments:\n  - Reihan Salam (Manhattan Institute) acknowledges the book’s merits but disputes the size of demand for low-skilled migration.\n  - Salam favors more selective immigration policy to mitigate short-term social frictions and fiscal costs (examples: subsidized housing or health care for low-skilled immigrants)."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Ongoing and future work",
      "content": "- New research agenda: large-scale project on immigration to Europe and its political effects, involving 37 coauthors.\n- Continued use of large datasets, generational linkage algorithms, oral histories, and surveys to test commonly held beliefs about migration and immigration.\n\nContent summarized from: Leah Boustan: Debunking Myths, CHRIS WELLISZ, March 2025.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- People in Economics — Leah Platt Boustan\n  - People in Economics — Leah Platt Boustan (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - People in Economics — Leah Platt Boustan (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/03/people-in-economics-debunking-myths-chris-wellisz"
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    "Authors: CHRIS WELLISZ",
    "Published: March 3, 2025",
    "Childhood and family influence: high school trip from Boston to Chicago to interview great-uncle Joe; family story of immigration from Russia in 1891 and economic advancement from pushcart to storeowner.",
    "Early inspirations: Stephen Spielberg’s interviews with Holocaust survivors in the mid-1990s spurred interest in genealogy.",
    "Academic path:",
    "Career highlights:",
    "Personal: Boustan is married to Ra’anan Boustan; both couples have three children.",
    "Data sources and methods:",
    "Research collaboration:",
    "Intergenerational mobility:",
    "Assimilation and integration:",
    "Labor market effects:",
    "Transition from academic to public audience:",
    "Policy recommendations and perspective:",
    "Counterarguments:",
    "New research agenda: large-scale project on immigration to Europe and its political effects, involving 37 coauthors.",
    "Continued use of large datasets, generational linkage algorithms, oral histories, and surveys to test commonly held beliefs about migration and immigration.",
    "**People in Economics — Leah Platt Boustan**"
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