Joint with Yi-Ju Hung, Marco Tabellini, and [Monia Tomasella]()
We study the effects of immigration restrictions on intergenerational mobility of USborn men in the United States. We link US-born sons observed in 1900, 1920, and 1940 full-count Censuses to their fathers, and construct a measure of county-level exposure to the 1920s immigration acts, which sharply curtailed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Exploiting this policy-induced variation, we find that the quotas reduced intergenerational mobility among US-born white men, but had no adverse effect for Black men. Family background played an important role: among whites, the decline was larger for sons of poorer fathers, while those from richer families limited these losses by moving to higher-opportunity areas. Evidence from the 1940 Census suggests that the main results reflect occupational downgrading and lower productivity within jobs, rather than reduced human capital investment.