The New Third Generation: Post-1965 Immigration and the Long March of Assimilation

Tomás Jiménez, Stanford University
Julie Park, University of Maryland
Juan M. Pedroza, Stanford University

A generation after the inception of a now vast body of research on the post-1965 “new second-generation,” we turn our attention to the “new third-generation.” If the past is a guide, this new third generation will write the next and most significant chapter in the assimilation of the post-1965 immigration wave. Using the 1980 Census and the 2008-2013 Current Population Survey, we compare the family and household characteristics of post-1965 second-generation Latino and Asian children in 1980 to third-generation children a cohort later. We provide a portrait of the household and socioeconomic characteristics in which the new third-generation is growing up. We then examine the relationship between these household characteristics and two important outcomes for the new third-generation: ethnic/racial identification for children with intermarried parents, and multigenerational households. We discuss these findings in the context of the larger research agenda we offer for studying the new third-generation.