What Percentage Of Modern English Is Derived From Old English

[Kristy Suzuki]

Newly arrived immigrants today also are markedly better educated than their counterparts of 50 years ago, and have narrowed their schooling gap with the U.S.-born population. About half work in managerial, professional, and sales and administrative support jobs, a higher share than in any decade from 1970 on. However, they also are more likely to be living in poverty than in 1970, and their family incomes are no higher.

Since passage of the 1965 immigration law, the dominant region of origin of new immigrants has shifted three times. In earlier waves of immigration, most arrivals came from Europe, and this trend continued even into 1970, when a plurality of recently arrived immigrants was from there (30%). Meanwhile, roughly equal shares of recent immigrants were from Central and South America (20%), Asia (19%) and the Caribbean (18%), regions that had long had little representation among newly arrived immigrants.13

More recently, there has been another change. An abrupt slowdown in new immigration from Mexico, especially of unauthorized immigrants (Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera, 2013), reduced the Mexican share of new arrivals to only 15% by 2013. Altogether, new immigrants from Central and South America represented just 28% of the total in 2013.

At the same time, immigration from Asia increased. The number of new arrivals from Asia, fueled in part by the greater propensity of Asian immigrants to obtain green cards based on employer sponsorship, grew 30% between 2000 and 2013 (Pew Research Center, 2012). By 2011, new arrivals from Asia were the single largest origin group among new immigrants. By 2013, their share had grown to 41% of new arrivals, the highest share from that continent in U.S. history.

In 2013, there were 2.5 million recently arrived immigrants from Asia, a more than sevenfold increase since 1970. New immigration from Asia nearly quadrupled in the 1970s, and it grew by about a quarter in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

The number of newly arrived immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa also has grown. New Caribbean immigrants now exceed those from Europe. The number of newly arrived immigrants from Africa grew 41% from 2000 to 2013, a sharper rise than for other major groups.

The changing gender pattern for recent immigrants is explained in part by the rise and fall of unauthorized immigration. Unauthorized immigrants are more likely to be men (Fry, 2006). As the number of unauthorized immigrants grew in the decades after passage of the 1965 law, so did the male share of recently arrived immigrants. Yet as the flow of unauthorized immigrants fell sharply in the wake of the Great Recession (Passel and Cohn, 2010, Passel, Cohn, and Gonzalez-Barrera, 2013), the female share of recent arrivals increased.

The temporary U.S. trend toward a more male-dominated immigration flow was noteworthy in part because of its rarity. In many countries of the world, women have constituted a rising share of international migrants since 1960 (United Nations Population Fund, 2006).

The age of newly arrived immigrants has not significantly changed since 1970. The majority of new arrivals are 18 to 44 years old. Relatively few new arrivals are children. In 1980, 30% of recently arrived immigrants were children. While the 1965 law emphasized family reunification, the share of newly arrived immigrants who are children has steadily declined to less than 20% in 2013.

Regardless of the educational benchmark chosen, those coming to the U.S. are much better educated than their counterparts of 50 years ago. Among adults ages 25 and older, a larger share in 2013 had a high school diploma, a college degree or an advanced degree, and a smaller share had less than a ninth-grade education. For example, half of newly arrived immigrants in 1970 had at least a high school education; in 2013, more than three-quarters did. In 1970, a fifth had graduated from college; in 2013, 41% had done so.

The gap in high school completion between recent immigrant arrivals and the U.S. born was only four percentage points in 1970, but it widened to 18 points by 2000, reflecting a slowed increase in education levels of recent immigrants even as levels among the U.S. born steadily rose. Subsequently, the gap narrowed to 13 percentage points in 2013: 77% of recent immigrants and 90% of U.S.-born adults had completed high school.

In 1970, recently arrived immigrants (30%) were more likely than U.S.-born adults (23%) to have completed at least some college. However, U.S.-born adults surpassed newly arrived immigrants by 1990. In 2013, 57% of newly arrived immigrants had completed at least some college, compared with 61% of U.S. adults. But this is due entirely to the higher share of U.S. born adults who have some college education, but no degree.

In 1970, 42% of newly arrived immigrants were in managerial, professional, technical, sales and administrative support occupations. But as more immigrants arrived in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the share in these occupations fell, until recently. Similarly, in 1970, 28% of new arrivals were operatives and laborers. The share of new arrivals working in this broad occupational group has also steadily contracted over the decades.

The gap between recent arrivals and the U.S.-born population in median family income widened considerably during the first few decades after passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. However, it has narrowed more recently as U.S.-born family incomes plummeted after the Great Recession.

Family incomes of newly arrived immigrants have not exceeded their 1970 levels in any subsequent decade. Median adjusted family incomes of U.S.-born residents were larger in 2013 than in 1970, but lower than they were when the recession began in 2007.

These income calculations incorporate changes in family size over time. Family size has fallen more sharply for the U.S. born than for recently arrived immigrants.17 The average family size for both groups was nearly equal in 1970, but it was somewhat larger for new immigrants (3.5) than for the U.S. born (3.1) in 2013. All other things being equal, larger families are worse off than smaller ones with the same income because there are more people to feed, clothe and otherwise support.

In 1970, 18% of newly arrived immigrants lived below the official poverty line. Poverty among newly arrived immigrants trended upward until 1990, when it reached 30%. Poverty among recent immigrants fell after 1990 and was 24% in 2007. The Great Recession and weak recovery pushed poverty among recent immigrants to 28% in 2013.

Earlier sections of this chapter documented the dramatic changes in the origins of recent immigrants to the U.S. since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and the overall changes for recent immigrants in certain characteristics. This section looks in more detail at the trends in educational attainment and family incomes of recent immigrants by region of origin.

Immigrants to the U.S. in recent years are better educated than earlier immigrants, both because of overall changes in region of origin and the fact that immigrants from every major region are better educated than their counterparts were in 1970.

Recent arrivals from Mexico in 2013 were three times as likely to have at least completed high school as those who came prior to 1970. In 1970, 14% of Mexican arrivals ages 25 and older had finished high school. By 2013, 48% of Mexican recent arrivals had completed that education level.

In 2013, 95% of European arrivals had finished high school. This is nearly twice the level of high school completion by Europeans arriving in the five years prior to 1970 (48%). High school completion among immigrants coming from the Caribbean has doubled in the past 50 years. In 2013, 72% of Caribbean arrivals had finished high school, up from 36% in 1970.

An estimated 50 million people were living in situations of modern slavery on any given day in 2021, according to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. Of these people, approximately 27.6 million were in forced labour and 22 million were in forced marriages.

Modern slavery occurs in every country, regardless of wealth. More than half (52 per cent) of all forced labour and a quarter of all forced marriages can be found in upper-middle income or high-income countries.

The Global Slavery Index is a national breakdown of the extent of modern slavery in 160 countries. This section presents findings of our country-level analysis of the extent and drivers of modern slavery, together with actions taken by governments to respond to modern slavery.

The 10 countries with highest prevalence share some political, social, and economic characteristics, including limited protections for civil liberties and human rights. Many of these countries are in volatile regions, which have experienced political instability, conflict, and/or authoritarianism. Many are home to large numbers of vulnerable people, such as refugees or migrant workers. Migrant workers comprise the vast majority of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait where they effectively fall under the control of employers due to the kafala (sponsorship) system and have few, if any, labour rights.

While our understanding of the relationship between conflict and modern slavery is growing, protracted conflict is a known risk multiplier, as breakdown in the rule of law, loss of social support networks, and the large-scale disruption that occurs during conflicts all serve to increase risk of both forced labour and forced marriage. North Korea, Eritrea, and Afghanistan have all been involved in protracted conflicts.3 Trkiye, which hosts millions of refugees from Syria, and Russia were both involved in the Syrian conflict. Russia also launched an invasion of Ukraine in 2022 after having annexed Crimea in 2014.4 A lack of data in countries experiencing conflict means that estimates in these countries, and the regions they are situated in, will fall short of the true extent of modern slavery.

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