Immigration's Legacy

"The Culture Transplant

By Garett Jones

(Stanford, 213 pages, $25)

In "The Culture Transplant," Garett Jones argues that cultural traits can persist for generations after migrants arrive in a new country. Newcomers don't simply assimilate to their new homes; as the book's subtitle puts it, they "make the economies they move to a lot like the ones they left." It's a thesis that is at once highly provocative and a restatement of common sense: Poorly chosen immigrants can undermine a country's success; cultures don't disappear when people move from place to place.

If it is obvious that cultures and institutions persist when people cross national borders, the real question is: To what extent? One approach to finding the answer is to see how various attitudes endure. Trust, for instance, is one of the more commonly studied attributes: economic cooperation relies upon it, yet it varies substantially from culture to culture. Mr. Jones, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, notes that, even after four generations in the U.S., immigrants continue to hold attitudes toward trust that are significantly influenced by their home countries. On a host of other matters, such as family, abortion and the role of government, fourth-generation immigrants on average converge only about 60% of the way to the national norm. "Overall," Mr. Jones contends, "that low level of conformity is a bad sign, unless you think most immigrants come from countries with better political attitudes than Americans currently have."

Earnings in the U.S. also correlate with historical earnings by ancestry: In their respective home countries, for example, Norwegians outearn Poles, who outearn Filipinos; the same applies when comparing U.S. counties dominated by each of these ethnicities. How long after migration can we still detect such effects? Mr. Jones pays special attention to the Deep Roots theory of economic development, which holds that a nation's present per capita income is strongly correlated with the state of the world in 1500, particularly as influenced by three factors: political development, farming experience and technological prowess. Using these three variables, Mr. Jones calculates a migration-adjusted state, agriculture and technology -- or "SAT" -- score and finds that it predicts more than 60% of modern-day income differences. He notes other research suggesting that these historical variables have a big effect on modern government quality, too.

Of the three variables, Mr. Jones tells us that the strongest predictor of income is a country's history of technological development. Technology also seems to be the best long-run predictor of government quality. So the main story seems to be about technological development persisting over time, and of people bringing their technological capabilities to new places. Mr. Jones points out, however, that the three factors are not completely independent: "Places with centuries of organized states and a long history of settled agriculture were likely, at least by the year 1500, to be using a lot of the world's best technology."

So where does this leave Americans and the idea that the wrong kind of immigration could undermine a country's prospects? Mr. Jones notes that much of the world's innovation comes from a handful of highly advanced countries, including the U.S., and that it would be disastrous if these countries stopped pushing the boundaries of technological and economic development. This would, of course, be a very serious concern if, say, a foreign power took over the U.S., or the U.S. enacted a full-on open-borders policy. In such cases it would matter a lot what cultural baggage and technological capabilities the new entrants came with.

The actual parameters of the U.S. immigration debate, however, are more limited. This country is currently only about 15% foreign-born -- a big increase from the 1960s, but in line with levels a century ago. The status quo has proved immensely resilient in recent decades, and arguments for policy changes tend to be dominated by more pedestrian and practical worries. Some want to bring in people who will innovate, create jobs and pay lots of taxes; others want to provide low-skill labor to key industries. Some want to help refugees and maintain America's image as a place where the poor of other nations can pull themselves up; others want to keep numbers low to preserve America's culture and protect workers from competition. Some want more diversity -- a topic to which Mr. Jones devotes an entire chapter, arguing persuasively that ethnic diversity is not the economic benefit that some wish it were. "When you see people chanting, 'Our diversity is our strength,' " he writes, "you're hearing the cultural equivalent of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience."

These concerns are immediate and tangible, not preoccupied with the effect of immigration generations from now. To address some of the more compelling worries, we might start placing greater emphasis on skills, perhaps implementing a points system, as Australia, Canada and the U.K. do, to grade potential immigrants.

In theory, such a system could include national "SAT" scores, or at least the "T" part that seems to matter so much. But then again, we might instead trust that an applicant's education and job prospects would be enough to help us identify those immigrants who will positively affect the country over the long term, avoiding the unseemly practice of discriminating based on a country's development 500 years ago.

"The Culture Transplant" is a good read, a brief dive into the intriguing question of why some places and some people are so much more prosperous than others. But perhaps the policy implications are mostly common sense: We should admit immigrants with traits we value, because those traits could persist for generations to come." [1]

1. Immigration's Legacy
Verbruggen, Robert.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 12 Dec 2022: A.15.