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"The Best Country in the World": The Surprising Social Mobility of New York’s Irish Famine Immigrants
Author(s)
Date Issued
2021-08
Date Available
2021-10-19T11:19:08Z
Abstract
We use databases we have created from the records of New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank, founded by pre-Famine Irish immigrants and their children to serve Famine era immigrants, to study the social mobility of bank customers and, by extension, Irish immigrants more generally. We infer that New York’s Famine Irish had a greater range of employment opportunities open to them than perhaps commonly acknowledged, and that the majority were eventually able to move a rung or two up the American socio-economic ladder, supporting the conviction of many Famine immigrants that the U.S. was indeed “the best country in the world.”
Type of Material
Working Paper
Publisher
University College Dublin. School of Economics
Start Page
1
End Page
37
Series
UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series
WP2021/21
Copyright (Published Version)
2021 the Authors
Classification
N0
N3
J6
G21
Language
English
Status of Item
Not peer reviewed
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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