Intersecting Inequalities: Four Essays on Race, Immigration, and Gender in the Contemporary United States.

Abstract

This dissertation consists of four essays on the intersections of group identities and their implications for social inequality. Two of these essays address the well-being of contemporary Asian and Latin American immigrants to the U.S., who have often been considered to face additional challenges as immigrants due to their status as racial minorities. The other two essays explore how the relationship between gender and earnings is contingent on race. My first two essays explore the determinants and consequences of assimilation among immigrant adolescents. The first essay is an empirical analysis of the relationship between assimilation and educational achievement, psychological well-being, and risky behaviors among immigrant adolescents in five different ethnic groups. I find that for most groups assimilation is related to both greater educational achievement and higher levels of risky behaviors, suggesting that assimilation is beneficial for some outcomes and detrimental for others. The second essay explores contextual influences on immigrant adolescents’ assimilation patterns. Drawing on insight from segmented assimilation theory, which suggests that the consequences of assimilation may differ according to the local context, I hypothesize that immigrant families may adjust their assimilation behaviors depending on neighborhood socioeconomic status. I find that immigrant adolescents living in poor neighborhoods are less behaviorally assimilated, relative to same-neighborhood peers, than those living in more affluent neighborhoods. The last two essays explore the contribution of family-level factors to explaining racial variation in gender earnings inequality. The third essay examines levels of gender earnings inequality across all major racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. I find that non-Hispanic whites have the highest gender earnings gap among the 19 racial/ethnic groups examined, and that there is far more racial variation in the gender earnings gap among married workers than among single workers. This suggests that family-level factors contribute to the racial differences I uncover. I further explore this theme in the fourth essay, in which I focus on differences in labor force responses to parenthood between Asian Americans and non-Hispanic whites. I find that Asian American women’s high earnings result in part from their lower likelihood of cutting back on labor supply after becoming parents.