Recent Research: How are Immigrant and Ethnic Workers Changing the Face of U.S. Innovation?

Foreign-born and ethnic workers continue to rapidly grow in their importance to the U.S. innovation economy, according to two recent studies that address this issue by examining the links between these groups and patenting activity.

In How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?, Jennifer Hunt uses state panel data from 1950 to 2000 to measure the extent of immigration's impact on U.S. patenting, state innovation economies and the science and technology workforce. Foreign-born residents account for just over ten percent of the working population, but represent about 25 percent of the science and engineering workforce. The 2003 Survey of College Graduates found that immigrants patent at double the rate of native U.S. residents. That study found that the difference was attributable to disproportionate educational attainment in science and engineering.

Hunt finds that a 1.3 percent increase in the share of the population composed of immigrant college graduates can increase patenting per capita by between 10 and 26 percent. Post-college immigrants had an even larger positive impact. In addition, immigrant college graduates can have positive spillovers for the non-immigrant population. While there may be some short-term crowding out of the native population as immigrants arrive, in the long-term, there is evidence that post-college immigrants can increase the patenting activity of their native neighbors.

Overall, Hunt argues that an immigrant college graduate contributes at least twice as much to patenting as a native counterpart.

Purchase How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation? from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14312.pdf

Another article by William R. Kerr, The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors, finds that ethnic Chinese and Indian inventors play a much larger role in US patenting than they did a few decades ago. Though the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does not ask for the ethnicity of inventors, Kerr employs a database of ethnic names used by direct-mail companies to estimate the share of U.S. patents. He finds that ethnic Chinese inventors have steadily increased their presence in U.S. patenting since 1975, overtaking European inventors as the most common ethnic contributor. In 2007, 8 percent of inventors were identified as having a Chinese surname.

Ethnic Indian inventors have also increased their U.S. patenting activity, though not to the extent of ethnic Chinese. Since 2000, Indian inventors have decreased their share of patents as a group.

Kerr also finds that since ethnic groups tend to agglomerate in cities and are not evenly distributed throughout the country, some cities disproportionately benefit from the growth of the U.S. Chinese and Indian population. Also since ethnic Chinese and Indian inventors have their greatest impact in the computers, communication, electrical and electronics sectors, cities with a growing number of residents in these groups, like San Francisco, appear to have experienced patenting gains associated with their ethnic populations.

Download The Agglomeration of US Ethnic Inventors from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1162226

Learn About the Future of State TBED Workforce Strategies at SSTI's 12th Annual Conference

SSTI will be hosting a discussion about what states are doing to keep high school and college graduates from leaving their borders and how they are attracting tech saavy-workers at this year's Annual Conference in Cleveland.

Jeff Kjenstad of the South Dakota Department of Labor will talk about the accomplishments of Dakota Roots, one of the country's most successful recruitment and retention programs. Marsha Schachtel, Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies will add a long-term, national perspective by examining the history of state TBED workforce programs, including those that have succeeded and those that have failed. 

We expect a lively conversation about how to stem braindrain, the proper role of state and regional government and what skilled workers are looking for when they make decisions about where to live and work.

More information is available at: http://www.ssticonference.org/