The Generational Progress of Mexican Americans

Jeffery Grogger and colleagues propose to analyze previously untapped information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to estimate both intergenerational progress between second- and third-generation Mexican Americans and the extent of selective ethnic attrition, or when people stop identifying as Mexican.

The NLSY provides longitudinal information for a nationally-representative sample of youth living in the U.S. and between 12 and 16 years old when the survey began, in 1997. It also provides information on the countries of birth of the respondent, the respondent’s biological parents, and the respondent parents’ biological grandparents. Importantly, for the investigators’ purposes, there are two sub-samples: a cross-sectional sample of all U.S. youth in the sampling universe at the time the survey began and a supplemental sample designed to over-sample non-Hispanic black and Hispanic youth. The investigators will use this data to investigate the dynamics of intergenerational transmission of human capital and socioeconomic attainment within Mexican-American families.