This book addresses the educational, occupational, and income progress of Jews in the American labor market. Using theoretical and statistical findings, it compares the experience of American Jews with that of other Americans, from the middle of the 19th century through the 20th and into the early 21st century.Jews in the United States have been remarkably successful; from peddlers and low-skilled factory workers, clearly near the bottom of the economic ladder, they have, as a community, risen to the top of the economic ladder. The papers included in this volume, all authored or co-authored by Barry Chiswick, address such issues as the English language proficiency, occupational attainment and earnings of Jews, educational and labor market discrimination against Jews, life cycle and labor force participation patterns of Jewish women, and historical and methodological issues, among many others. The final chapter analyzes alternative explanations for theconsistently high level of educational and economic achievement of American Jewry over the past century and a half.The chapters in this book also develop and demonstrate the usefulness of alternative techniques for identifying Jews in US Census and survey data where neither religion nor Jewish ethnicity is explicitly identified. This methodology is also applicable to the study of other minority groups in the US and in other countries.

A unique conceptual and statistical analysis of the economic progress of American Jews

Chapter 1. Introduction.- PART I. Turn of the 20th Century.- Chapter 2. The Billings Report and the Occupational Attainment of American Jewry, 1890.- Chapter 3. Jewish Immigrant Skill and Occupational Status at the Turn of the Century.- Chapter 4. Jewish Immigrant Wages in America in 1909: An Analysis of the Dillingham Commission Data.- PART II. Across the 20th Century.- Chapter 5. The Occupational Attainment and Earnings of American Jewry, 1890 to 1990.- Chapter 6. The Occupational Attainment of American Jewry: 1990 to 2000.- Chapter 7. Differences in Education and Earnings Across Racial and Ethnic Groups.- Chapter 8. Labor Supply and Investment in Child Quality: A Study of Jewish and Non-Jewish Women.- Chapter 9. The Linguistic and Economic Adjustment of Soviet Jewish Immigrants in the United States: 1980 to 2000 (Michael Wenz).- PART III. Immigrant Adjustment in Israel.- Chapter 10. Mass Migration and Income Inequality in Israel.- Chapter 11. Hebrew Language Usage: Determinants and Effects on Earnings Among Immigrants in Israel.- Chapter 12. The Effect of Linguistic Distance and Country of Origin on Immigrant Language Skills: Application to Israel (Michael Beenstock and Gaston L. Repetto).- PART IV. Methodological Issues.- Chapter 13. The Economics of the Diaspora Revised (Elliezer Ayal).- Chapter 14. A Method for Proxying a Respondent's Religious Background: An Application to School Choice Decisions (Stella Koutroumanes Hofrenning).- Chapter 15. Testing the Immigrant Assimilation Hypothesis with Longitudinal Data (Michael Beenstock and Ari Paltiel).- PART V. Contemporary Jewish Issues.- Chapter 16. Russian Jewish Immigrants in the United States: The Adjustment of Their English Language Proficiency and Earnings in the American Community Survey (Nicholas Larsen).- Chapter 17. The Rise and Fall of the American Jewish PhD.- Chapter 18. The Earnings of American Jewish Men: Human Capital, Denomination and Religiosity (Jidong Huang).- Chapter 19. An Economic Analysis of Philanthropy.- Chapter 20. The Cost of Living Jewishly and Jewish Continuity (Carmel U. Chiswick).- PART VI. Conclusion.- Chapter 21. The Economic Progress of American Jewry: From Eighteenth Century Merchants to Twenty-First Century Professionals.- Chapter 22. Ordinary People, Extraordinary Outcomes: Why the Jews Flourished in America.- Chapter 23. American Jewish Economic Attainment: Prospects for the Future.