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36 publications found, searching for 'Joel Perlmann '
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One-Pager No. 59
April 23, 2019
The Limitations of the “Populism” Explanation
AbstractSome common accounts of “populism” and its causes risk leading us away from understanding what is happening today in parts of the democratic West, according to Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann. He cautions that economic insecurity may well be a common source of populism, but such insecurity is too prevalent and too diverse to be tied […]
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One-Pager No. 58
November 09, 2018
A Citizenship Question on the US Census
AbstractThe Trump administration is facing a legal challenge to its efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 decennial census—a question that was first included in 1890, but has not been asked of the entire population since 1950. If the citizenship question was asked in the past, why not reinstate it? Senior Scholar Joel […]
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Book Series
April 01, 2018
America Classifies the Immigrants
AbstractIn America Classifies the Immigrants: From Ellis Island to the 2020 Census (Harvard University Press, 2018), Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann traces the evolution of thinking about “race” and “ethnic groups” in America. Beginning with the 1897 “List of Races and Peoples” through the proposed 2020 changes for the US Census, Perlmann examines the shifting ideas […]
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Policy Notes No. 8
December 17, 2015
The US Census Asks About Race and Ethnicity: 1980–2020
AbstractThis policy note examines the formulation and reformulation of questions deployed by the US Census Bureau to gather information on racial and ethnic origin in recent decades. The likely outcome for the 2020 Census is that two older questions on race and Hispanic origin will be combined into a single question on ethno-racial origin. The […]
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Working Paper No. 857
December 17, 2015
Ethno-Racial Origin in US Federal Statistics: 1980–2020
AbstractThis paper describes the transformations in federal classification of ethno-racial information since the civil rights era of the 1960s. These changes were introduced in the censuses of 1980 and 2000, and we anticipate another major change in the 2020 Census. The most important changes in 1980 introduced the Hispanic Origin and Ancestry questions and the […]
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Working Paper No. 648
January 06, 2011
Views of European Races among the Research Staff of the US Immigration Commission and the Census Bureau, ca. 1910
AbstractThis paper discusses support for, and opposition to, racial classification of European immigrants among high-level researchers at both the United States Immigration Commission of 1907–11 (the Dillingham Commission) and the Census Bureau during those same years. A critical distinction must be made between the Commission members—political appointees who mostly supported some form of restriction at […]
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Working Paper No. 646
December 22, 2010
A Demographic Base for Ethnic Survival?
AbstractNew data from the IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) project permit an exploration of the demographic basis for ethnic survival across successive generations. I first explore the degree of ethnic blending among the grandchildren of early- to mid-19th-century German immigrants; second, these descendants’ own marital choices; and third, the likely composition of the fourth […]
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Working Paper No. 633
November 02, 2010
Immigrant Parents’ Attributes versus Discrimination
AbstractThere is much interest in explaining the persistent ethnic gaps in education among Israeli Jews; specifically, the much lower attainments of those from Asian and African countries compared to the rest—Mizrahim vs. Ashkenazim, respectively. Some explanations (especially early ones) have stressed premigration immigrant characteristics, particularly the relatively lower level of educational attainment among Mizrahim. More […]
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Working Paper No. 526
December 21, 2007
American Jewish Opinion about the Future of the West Bank
AbstractAmerican Jewish opinion about the Arab-Israel conflict matters for both American and Israeli politics as well as for American Jewish life. This paper undertakes an analysis of that opinion based on American Jewish Committee (AJC) annual polls. Recently, the AJC made the individual-level datasets for the 2000–05 period available to researchers. The paper focuses on […]
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Working Paper No. 508
July 18, 2007
The American Jewish Committee’s Annual Opinion Surveys
AbstractThe American Jewish Committee (AJC) surveys of Jewish opinion are unique both in being conducted annually and in the subject matter covered. This paper assesses the quality of these samples. I first summarize my earlier findings on the implications of limiting a sample to respondents who answered “Jewish” when asked a screening question about their […]
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Working Paper No. 507
July 17, 2007
Who’s a Jew in an Era of High Intermarriage?
AbstractThe old ways in which surveys of Jews handled marginal cases no longer make sense, and the number of cases involved is no longer small. I examine in detail the public-use samples of the two recent national surveys of Americans of recent Jewish origin—the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) and the American Jewish Identity Survey […]
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Working Paper No. 501
May 21, 2007
Two National Surveys of American Jews, 2000–01
AbstractWhile there have been very few national surveys of American Jews, two that we do have are from the same period, 2000–01. They were conducted by different researchers using different sampling methods. Known as the NJPS and the AJIS, these surveys are now available as public-use datasets, but they have not yet been systematically compared. […]
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Working Paper No. 497
May 02, 2007
Surveying American Jews and Their Views on Middle East Politics
AbstractThis working paper takes up three related themes. In section 1, I briefly describe the issues relevant to surveying American Jews and highlight the importance of authoritative national surveys; in section 2, I note that these surveys have not included much exploration of American Jewish divisions over Israeli and American Middle East policy. In section […]
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Working Paper No. 473
August 20, 2006
The American Jewish Periphery
AbstractThis paper calls attention to the American Jewish periphery—Americans of recent Jewish origin who have only the most tenuous connections, if any, with those origins. This periphery has been growing to the point that there are now, for example, nearly a million Americans with recent Jewish origins (origins no farther back in time than the […]
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Working Paper No. 465
August 04, 2006
The Local Geographic Origins of Russian-Jewish Immigrants, circa 1900
AbstractThis working paper concerns the local origins of Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, circa 1900. New evidence is drawn from a large random sample of Russian-Jewish immigrant arrivals in the United States. It provides information on origins not merely by large regions, or even by the provinces of the Pale of Settlement (where nearly […]
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Working Paper No. 458
July 20, 2006
Dissent and Discipline in Ben Gurion’s Labor Party, 1930–32
AbstractThis paper describes a small opposition group that functioned during 1930–33 on the left fringes of Ben Gurion’s Mapai party in Palestine. Mapai dominated Jewish Palestine’s politics, and later the politics of the young State of Israel; it lives on today in Israel’s Labor Party. The opposition group, probably no more than a dozen active […]
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Book Series
December 01, 2005
Italians Then, Mexicans Now
AbstractAccording to the American dream, hard work and a good education can lift people from poverty to success in the “land of opportunity.” The unskilled immigrants who came to the United States from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely realized that vision. Within a few generations, their […]
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Working Paper No. 376
April 01, 2003
Mexicans Now, Italians Then
AbstractThis working paper continues earlier efforts to compare the experiences of today’s second-generation Mexican Americans with those of second-generation members of major immigrant groups of a century ago. Here the focus is on intermarriage. Contemporary data comes from 1998-2001 CPS data sets and historical data from the IPUMS data sets for 1920 and 1960. As […]
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Book Series
November 21, 2002
The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals
AbstractThe change in the way the federal government asked for information about race in the 2000 Census marked an important turning point in the way Americans measure race. By allowing respondents to choose more than one racial category for the first time, the Census Bureau challenged strongly held beliefs about the nature and definition of […]
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Working Paper No. 350
July 01, 2002
Polish and Italian Schooling Then, Mexican Schooling Now?
AbstractThis paper relies on data from the census and the Current Population Survey (CPS) to compare levels of education attained by second-generation young people from important immigrant groups during the last great wave of immigration and by second-generation Mexican Americans today. In addition, it provides evidence, based on the CPS, about the earnings relative to […]
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Working Paper No. 343
February 01, 2002
Poles and Italians Then, Mexicans Now?
AbstractA good deal of recent discussion among social scientists concerned with immigration is about the disadvantages faced by immigrants who enter the American labor force with much-lower levels of skills than those possessed by the typical native white worker. Among contemporary immigrant groups, by far the most important example is the Mexicans. The challenges faced […]
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Working Paper No. 335
August 01, 2001
Young Mexican Americans, Blacks, and Whites in Recent Years
AbstractThis paper stresses that the key to concerns about the progress of second-generation Americans is the fate of the Mexican second generation. It compares several indicators of the advances of second-generation Mexicans to those of non-Hispanic, native-born blacks and non-Hispanic, native-born white attainments. The analysis relies on the most recent available evidence from the CPS […]
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Working Paper No. 333
June 01, 2001
Toward a Population History of the Second Generation
AbstractPast-present comparisons of second-generation progress are often plagued by vague references to the baseline, the past. This essay seeks to contribute some specificity to the understanding of second generations past for the sake of comparison and as a contribution to historical understanding in its own right. First, it defines the older second-generation groups that make […]
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Working Paper No. 320
January 01, 2001
“Race or People”
AbstractIn 1898, the United States Bureau of Immigration initiated a classification of immigrants into some 40 categories of "race or people." Nearly all the categories covered Europeans. In 1909 an effort was made to extend this system of classification to the US Census, and the relevant measure passed in the Senate. From the outset, organizations […]
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