2026/06/04 by María Cecilia Lara, Emiliano Travieso
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Birth records #Census #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Immigration #Latin Americans #Occupational prestige #Place of birth #Politics and Society in Latin America #Socioeconomic status
paper · doi:10.1017/s0212610926101062
crossref issued 2026/06/04 · crossref published 2026/06/04 · crossref published-online 2026/06/04 · openalex publication_date 2026/06/04 · crossref created 2026/06/04 · crossref deposited 2026/06/04 · openalex created_date 2026/06/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30
Abstract Were economic migrants to Latin America able to access the same occupations as locals? We examine 1900s Uruguay, where immigrants accounted for approximately one-fifth of the total population. Historical censuses in Uruguay are very limited, so we rely on random sampling to mine a new individual-level source: Uruguayan civil birth records. We find that the occupations of foreign-born fathers were in general like that of their Uruguayan counterparts, with the important exception of non-manual high-status occupations (especially “rancher,” hacendado ), for which being born in Uruguay remained a statistically significant advantage. This reflects both the success and the limits of Uruguay’s relatively egalitarian economy: migrants were readily integrated into a wide range of occupational paths but were less likely to reach the top of the occupational structure, where key resources (notably land) remained concentrated in the hands of a local elite.