The presence of children in immigrant households can influence the
assimilation of their parents, through either human capital transfers from
children to parents (parents learning from their children) or the assistance
children can provide in navigating economic life in the destination country
(parents leaning on their children). We examine the relationship between
the presence of children in U.S. immigrant households and the human
capital acquisition of their immigrant from 1850 to 2010. We first show
that immigrants who arrived in the Great Migration of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries were substantially less likely to arrive with
children than more recent immigrants. We then show that assimilation
appears slower for most recent cohorts than those that arrived during the
Great Migration, though in both eras cohort quality declines over time.
Finally, we show that the immigrant children of the earlier immigrants
were associated with more assimilation (less “leaning” and more
“learning”) than were the children of post-1960 immigrants