Faith and Assimilation: Italian Immigrants in the U.S.

Abstract

How do ethnic religious organizations influence immigrant assimilation? To answer this question, we assemble novel data from the Catholic directories to measure the presence of Italian Catholic churches in the US between 1890 and 1920, when four million Italians moved to America, and anti-Catholic sentiments were widespread. Exploiting variation in the timing of church entry across counties, we find that Italian churches had ambiguous effects on immigrant assimilation. Italian churches reduced social assimilation along dimensions that require more inter-group interactions, such as intermarriage and residential choices, but had no, if anything positive, effects on assimilation outcomes fully under individual control, like names chosen by parents for their US born children. Moreover, while Italian churches increased immigrants' labor force participation, they induced Italians to select jobs with fewer opportunities for occupational upgrading. We provide evidence that enhanced coordination within the Italian community and natives' backlash are plausible pathways for our results. We also identify patterns of selective migration of Italians following church entries. However, these are quantitatively small and cannot explain our findings. Despite the ambiguous effects on adults' outcomes, Italian churches benefited children, raising their literacy and ability to speak English.