Tracking a Changing America across the Generations after Immigration

Abstract

The post-1960s immigration boom and contemporary demographics have elevated generation-since-immigration as a category that is central to analysts and, more generally, to Americans as they make sense of their place in the world around them. This makes the collection of data on immigrant generations imperative if surveys are to keep up with how the nation’s people think about themselves and each other. A clear portrait of contemporary assimilation, and indeed American progress, depends on possessing the right tools to paint such a portrait. That means that surveys must enable researchers to identify respondents’ generation, particularly the third generation of the post-1965 immigration wave.