Four essays on racial stratification and *integration.

Abstract

This dissertation consists of four essays on racial stratification and integration in America. The four essays are entitled, respectively, Asian Americans' Earnings Disadvantage Reexamined: the Role of Place of Education, The Economic Assimilation of Asian Immigrants: a Longitudinal Study, A Preference-Opportunity Framework of Choice with Applications to Intergroup Friendship, and The Contextual Determinants of Interracial Preferences in Adolescent Friendship. The first essay addresses the model minority debate by examining whether Asian Americans earn less than whites given their qualifications, and if they do, what is the source of this earnings disadvantage. The main finding is that Asian Americans' earnings disadvantage is related to their immigration status, and in particular, to foreign education. Asian immigrants who acquired their educational credentials in the U.S. do not face any earnings disadvantage relative to whites. The second essay brings in a life-course perspective and examines the phenomenon of immigrant economic assimilation. Again, my findings point to the importance of obtaining U.S.-specific human capital---i.e., education and labor market experience---for Asian immigrants. First of all, Asian immigrants who completed their education in the U.S. experience the same earnings trajectory as that of native workers. Moreover, for Asian immigrants who migrated after completing education in foreign countries, the path of assimilation heavily depends upon the timing of migration. The earlier the migration in life course, the more immigrants invested in U.S. labor market experience in stead of foreign work experience, and the better economic prospects they face in the U.S. The other two essays are on interracial friendship choice. In the third essay, I develop the preference-opportunity-choice (POC) framework for analyzing intergroup friendship choice. Some statistical models are then proposed for estimating the effects of individual preferences on choice separate from the effects of opportunity structure. In the last essay I apply the POC framework to explore the effects of various contextual variables, and in particular, school racial diversity, on interracial preference. My results show that in schools with higher levels of racial diversity, where the opportunity for interracial contact is greater, students' underlying tendency to form cross-race friendship actually decreases.