Streets of Gold, Ran Abramitzky
Streets of Gold, Ran Abramitzky
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Streets of Gold
America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Author: Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan

Narrator: Rachel Botchan

Unabridged: 6 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 06/28/2022


Synopsis

Immigration is a fraught and misunderstood topic in America’s social discourse, with much of what we believe based largely on myth. Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan have spent the last decade searching for the facts. Their pioneering
research digs deep into the data on immigration, linking the experiences of immigrants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to those of immigrants today. Using powerful storytelling alongside big data, they provide
new evidence about the past and present of the American Dream that will change our thinking and policies.

Where you come from, they vividly illustrate, doesn’t matter. The children of immigrants from countries like El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala today are as likely to be as successful as those from Great Britain and Norway 150 years ago.
And in a pattern that has held for more than a century, the children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of US-born residents.

Immigration changes the economy in unexpected positive ways, staving off the economic decline that is the consequence of an aging population. Closing the door to immigrants harms the economic prospects of the US-born—the very people politicians are trying to protect.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jason on October 10, 2022

A superb example of original social science and its translation for a broader audience. In recent years Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan have produced path-breaking research on immigration by linking large datasets including Ancestry.com, the Census, tax records and more to understand the ways in whi......more

Goodreads review by Misael on July 05, 2022

Such a pleasure to read economic historians who know how to write. This book tackles the question of immigration from an empirical economic perspective, but it is by no means overly technical. It tackles questions about the economic performance of immigrants, their children, their integration into t......more

Goodreads review by Veronica on February 22, 2024

[audiobook & physical copy] one of my favorite for school reads.......more

Goodreads review by Avi on February 29, 2024

Interesting historical approach to immigration......more

Goodreads review by James on June 29, 2022

I'm not sure this is going to convince anyone who hasn't already chosen a side. I don't think the (seemingly well-supported) idea that immigrants advance more rapidly from the 25th wealth percentile to significantly higher percentiles that native-born Americans is going to convince any immigration s......more