Becoming American: The Demographic Integration of Italian and Swedish Immigrants at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Martin Dribe, Lund University
J. David Hacker, University of Minnesota
Francesco Scalone, Università di Bologna

This paper relies on new, high-density IPUMS samples of the 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses and new complete count census microdata to study the demographic behavior of Swedish and Italian immigrants in the United States. We model child mortality and fertility as time-dependent processes with a rich set of covariates, including intermarriage, residence characteristics, generation, age, parity, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, length of time in the United States, ability to speak English and propinquity estimates constructed from preliminary complete-count datasets at the Minnesota Population Center. Our findings are relevant to theories of linear and segmented assimilation.