The economic attainment patterns of foreign born male immigrants to the United States from Central and South American and Caribbean Basin nations : a multi-level analysis /
This dissertation analyzes the economic attainment patterns of foreign-born male workers in the United States, from countries of Central and South America, and the Caribbean Basin. Two theoretical perspectives are used in this analysis. The first, Human Capital Theory, is the view that the beginni...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2000.
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| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=727842961&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | This dissertation analyzes the economic attainment patterns of foreign-born male workers in the United States, from countries of Central and South America, and the Caribbean Basin. Two theoretical perspectives are used in this analysis. The first, Human Capital Theory, is the view that the beginning point of economic development, and therefore economic attainment, is the investment of capital. While capital is usually thought of in terms of money spent on heavy machinery or the development of an assembly line, or on other physical considerations, it can be better thought of as anything invested today aimed at yielding income later. Individuals bring capital to the marketplace, which is invested in exchange for future income. In the context of research on migration, each individual migrant brings to the marketplace certain characteristics that serve as a form of capital. This capital is then used in the search for and procurement of jobs. The second theoretical perspective upon which this research is based involves the capital of social context. Previous research argues in favor of an aggregate component not only of the decision to migrate but of economic attainment patterns as well. The degree to which group-level (structural) factors are related to patterns of earnings are just as important as individual human capital factors. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is used to examine relationships at both the individual-level and the group-level. This dissertation demonstrates the benefits that hierarchical linear modeling provides in migration studies by allowing the examination of individuals nested in the aggregate environment of their country groups. HLM enables a specific examination of the effects of aggregate level variables and individual level variables on individual outcomes. Support for the Human Capital hypotheses is found in this dissertation. Social Capital predictors were not found to be consistently statistically significant, nor effective in increasing the slopes of the individual-level predictors. The ineffectiveness of Social Capital predictors on the slopes of the Human Capital predictors may be due to the quality of immigrant from the sending countries examined or to their inability to lessen the social distance between the sending countries and the receiving country. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Sociology". |
| Physical Description: | xi, 141 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-140). |