IMMIGRANTS' GENES: GENETIC DIVERSITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

This paper examines the relationship between immigrants' genetic diversity and economic development in the United States during the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, a period commonly referred to as the age of mass migration from Europe to the New World. Our panel model estimates show that during this period, immigrants' genetic diversity is significantly positively correlated with measures of U.S. counties' economic development. There exists also a significant positive relationship between immigrants' genetic diversity in 1870 and contemporaneous measures of U.S. counties' average income. (JEL J11, O51, Z13)
I. INTRODUCTION Genetic diversity has been attributed an important role in explaining why there still exist persistent disparities in economic development across the globe (Ashraf and Galor 2016; Spolaore and [...]