Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Boustan photo and book cover
Date & Time Sep 15 2022 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Location Robertson Hall
Arthur Lewis Auditorium (Room 100)
Speaker(s)
Leah Boustan
Matthew Yglesias
Audience Open to the Public

Join us for a book talk with Leah Boustan, professor of economics and director of the Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University. In conversation with Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring newsletter and blog editor and Vox co-founder.

Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse. But in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. In Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, Princeton professor Leah Boustan and Stanford Professor Ran Abramitzky use the tools of modern data analysis to present new evidence about the past and present of the American Dream and debunk immigration myths fostered by political opportunism.

Leah Boustan is professor of economics and director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University. She is also co-director of the Development of the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and serves as co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Her prize-winning scholarly book, Competition in the Promised Land, examines the effect of the Great Black Migration from the rural South during and after World War II. She has written for The New York Times, The American Prospect, and Slate.