Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success

"Streets of Gold focuses on one of the most important economic issues, immigration. Like The Journey of Humanity , this book is grounded in a deep, broad set of published, peer-reviewed research that its authors and others have conducted in recent years. Their research and this book sharpen our understanding of the changing patterns of immigration and their economic impact. Absolutely. It is incredibly enjoyable and readable. The authors, in a way that is very rare for economists, find small stories that paint big pictures for the points they make. The first is the myth of rags to riches; in both earlier generations and today, immigrants generally did not climb the ladder that quickly. Their second point is that immigrant children have been highly mobile and that mobility has been similar across generations, although it varies depending on where your parents come from. The third point is about how the pattern of assimilation today is like the pattern of assimilation in the past, with regards to things like adoption of American names, moving out of ethnic enclaves and marrying out of one’s ethnic group."