The Effects of Having a Distinctively Immigrant Name on Education, Income, Occupation, and Longevity: Evidence from Sibling Comparisons

Jonathan Ababiy, University of Minnesota
Amber Anderson, University of Minnesota
Matthew Erkenbrack, University of Minnesota
Nayelli Guerrero, University of Minnesota
Sydney Hackett, University of Minnesota

Do people with immigrant-sounding names fare worse than people with non-Immigrant sounding names? This article utilizes historical census records to answer this question. Using machine learning techniques, we link boys in the 1920s census to the 1940s census and social security death records. We identify brother pairs similar in age and create measures of education, income, occupation, and longevity within brother pairs. Our study examines how a distinctively immigrant sounding name affects these outcomes for brother pairs. We also study whether this effect is stronger for immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, compared to immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. This research relies on brother pairs as a natural way of controlling for confounding environmental factors like neighborhood, family life, and genetics. Previous literature has established that names have economic consequences and this study serves to quantitatively express what these consequences are across 20th century America.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 124. The Long-Term Impacts of Discrimination: Named-Based Evidence from Sibling Pair Analyses of Linked U.S. Census and Mortality Data