Ran Abramitzky: Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

In a special Democracy Day Seminar at the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), Ran Abramitzky, Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Economics and the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences at Stanford University, will share findings from Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, a new book from PublicAffairs co-authored with Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics at Princeton University
 
Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. Using the tools of modern data analysis and ten years of pioneering research, new evidence is provided about the past and present of the American Dream, debunking myths fostered by political opportunism and sentimentalized in family histories. Using powerful story-telling and unprecedented research employing big data and algorithms, Abramitzky and Boustan provide a new take on American history with surprising results, especially how comparable the “golden era” of immigration is to today, and why many current policy proposals are so misguided.

As part of the CESTA Lunch Seminar Series, this presentation will include lunch and take place at the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis in Wallenberg 433A.

This event is co-sponsored with the Stanford Archaeology Center and Stanford Data Science.