Immigration policy has emerged as a focal point of political debate in many advanced economies. Proposals to curtail immigration are frequently justified on economic grounds. Some argue that immigrants increase competition in local labor markets, depress wages for native workers, and strain public resources. Research has increasingly sought to evaluate the consequences of immigration restrictions on economic growth, employment, and wages. While these studies have deepened our understanding of the shorter-run effects of immigration policy on labor markets, we know less about its implications for future generations of native-born workers. This question is especially important because immigration restrictions often persist for decades once enacted.

Our research examines this issue by studying the effects of US immigration laws passed in 1921 and 1924 on the intergenerational mobility of US-born men. These laws ended the age of mass migration (1850–1920), when over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States, by introducing a restrictive quota system that remained in place for four decades. The quotas sharply reduced immigration from southern and eastern Europe while allowing more immigrants from northern and western Europe. We created a county-level measure of exposure to the quotas based on preexisting immigrant settlement patterns and predicted inflows in the absence of the laws. We combined this measure with data from the 1900, 1920, and 1940 US censuses and the Census Tree project. These combined data allowed us to link US-born sons to their adult outcomes and trace family background, geographic location, and occupational status over time.

Our findings reveal that the quotas slowed intergenerational mobility among US-born white men. In counties more exposed to the quotas, sons were significantly less likely to attain a higher-status occupation than their fathers. A 5 percentage point increase in quota exposure (equivalent to moving from a county with low exposure to one with high exposure) reduced the probability of upward mobility by approximately 1.9 percentage points (about 3.7 percent). However, the effects differed sharply by race. For black men, quota exposure was associated with increased intergenerational mobility, although we cannot rule out the possibility of no effect. This contrasts with the negative effects observed for white men and is consistent with prior research. Black workers and European immigrants, particularly those from southern and eastern Europe, were closer substitutes in the labor market. By limiting new immigrant labor, the quotas may have reduced competition for lower-skilled urban jobs, modestly improving occupational prospects for black men.

Furthermore, parental resources appear to have played an important role. For white men, the negative effects of the quotas were smaller for sons of wealthier fathers. Our findings show that in more exposed counties, these workers were more likely to move to counties with stronger economic conditions and greater mobility prospects. Indeed, the quotas’ negative effects were substantially smaller for workers who moved.

Our research further explores the long-run consequences of the quotas using the 1940 census, the first census to systematically record individuals’ labor earnings and educational attainment. The data show that US-born white men from more exposed counties earned substantially lower wages in adulthood. Specifically, a 5 percentage point increase in quota exposure reduced weekly wages by 2.6 percent and hourly wages by 2.3 percent. Real wages for white men rose by roughly 10–20 percent between 1920 and 1940, so these losses account for about one-tenth to one-fifth of overall wage growth. The effects remain sizable when accounting for workers’ industries and occupations, indicating that the quotas depressed both occupational attainment and productivity within jobs. Additionally, white men from more exposed counties were less likely to be employed in 1940. For black men, the effects of the quotas on weekly wages, hourly wages, and employment appear positive, but the estimates are small and not precise enough to rule out the possibility of no effects.

Our research also explores possible explanations for the effects of the quotas. One possibility is that immigrants from unrestricted origins replaced those from restricted origins. Our findings show that counties more exposed to the quotas saw increases in migrants from elsewhere in the United States and from Canada and Mexico, which were not subject to quotas. However, these increases were concentrated in urban areas, and these migrants did not fully replace immigrants from restricted countries. Thus, this explanation cannot account for the full magnitude of the effects. 

A second possible explanation for the effects of the quotas involves the educational attainment of native workers. Immigrants may increase the returns to skill acquisition for native workers by making educated workers more productive or by altering their tasks. If so, then restricting immigration could weaken natives’ incentives to obtain education. Using the 1940 census, our research finds that a 5 percentage point increase in quota exposure reduced time spent in school for white men by approximately 0.16 years (about 1.5 percent). Our calculations imply that this effect can explain at most 22–49 percent of the decline in weekly wages, indicating that it was not the primary driver of the quotas’ effects. For black men, the quotas also appeared to reduce educational attainment, but we cannot rule out the possibility of no effect.

A third possible explanation is that immigrants complement native workers by raising their productivity and enabling them to specialize in higher-quality tasks. We explored this possibility by measuring counties’ exposure to English- and non-English-speaking immigrant groups. Our findings reveal that the negative mobility effects were nearly twice as large for white men living in counties with more reliance on non-English-speaking immigrant workers. Similarly, the exclusion of southern and eastern European immigrants, who were generally less educated, less proficient in English, and concentrated in different industries than northern and western European immigrants, resulted in larger losses for US-born white men. For black men, the effects were opposite.

The wage and employment evidence from the 1940 census reinforces this explanation. The declines in weekly and hourly earnings for white men were driven almost entirely by the exclusion of non-English-speaking and southern and eastern European immigrants. Excluding English-speaking and northern and western European immigrants, by contrast, led to much smaller or even positive effects on wages. Similarly, white men in counties more reliant on non-English-speaking and southern and eastern European immigrant workers were significantly less likely to be employed in 1940, although employment also declined due to the exclusion of other groups. Overall, our research suggests that immigration quotas in the 1920s disrupted complementarities between immigrant and native workers, reducing intergenerational mobility for US-born white men.

Note
This research brief is based on James J. Feigenbaum et al., “Immigration Restrictions and Natives’ Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from the 1920s US Quota Acts,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 34775, January 2026.