The front-page story about the successes of a young Brooklyn chess player from a Russian-speaking immigrant family can be considered deeply symbolic. Indeed, children from new American families attain remarkable achievements in many spheres.
As they grow up, they bypass their immigrant parents and the children of native-born Americans in terms of education and income. This is eloquently argued by the results of a 10-year study, "Heirs to the city: the children of immigrants come of age.” The $2 million study was conducted and funded by Harvard University and the Russell Sage Foundation.
The researchers focused their attention on five ethnic groups: the Chinese, Russian-speaking Jews, immigrants from the Dominican Republic, South America (Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), and the West Indies (specifically from the English-speaking Caribbean basin, including Belize and Guyana). The sociologists also interviewed native-born white Americans, African Americans and Puerto Ricans living in New York.
They found that the vast majority of the adult children of first-generation immigrants speak English fluently, are not constrained in their choice of profession like their parents are, live longer at home than native-born Americans, and are less connected to their native lands than their fathers and mothers.
The researchers single out second-generation Russian and Chinese-Americans for the following important characteristics: they get a better education than their native-born peers and earn no less than native-born white Americans. However, young women, who are more successful in school than the young men, earn less than their male counterparts after they finish their schooling.
The sociologists interviewed 3,415 people by telephone and had "face-to-face” discussions with 333 respondents. The interviews and investigations lasted several years, from 1998 to 2003, and were conducted with people aged 18 to 32 who were born in the United States or moved to this country when they were 12 or younger. The study covered the following areas: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, and Essex, Hudson, and Union counties in New Jersey.
