IMMIGRANTS & INNOVATIONThe Contribution of High‐Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States
Innovation and technological progress are key determinants of economic growth. There is growing evidence that immigrants play a key role in U.S. innovation. Based on a 2003 survey, U.S. immigrants with a four‐year college degree were twice as likely to have a patent than U.S.-born college graduates.
Innovation and technological progress are key determinants of economic growth. There is growing evidence that immigrants play a key role in U.S. innovation. For example, immigrants accounted for 23 percent of the total workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations in 2016. They accounted for 26 percent of U.S.-based Nobel Prize winners from 1990 through 2000. Based on a 2003 survey, U.S. immigrants with a four‐year college degree were twice as likely to have a patent than U.S.-born college graduates.
Nevertheless, we do not have an aggregate estimate of how immigrants contribute to U.S. innovation. One key reason is the lack of comprehensive data that enable researchers to identify immigrant inventors and determine how their productivity differs from native inventors. We brought to bear new data and used a unique approach to identify, for the first time, the immigrant status of individuals residing in the United States, which we then linked to patent data. We found that immigrants accounted for 16 percent of all U.S. inventors from 1990 to 2016. However, immigrants produced about 23 percent of total innovation, and we found that the average immigrant is substantially more productive than the average U.S.-born inventor. We also found that immigrants create spillovers onto the innovation of native inventors, thus indirectly contributing to innovation by raising native‐inventor productivity more than would collaboration with other native inventors.
Our analysis relied on the Infutor database, which provides the exact address history of more than 300 million adults living in the United States over the past 30 years. Beyond the exact address history, these data also include the individuals’ names, years of birth, and genders and the first five digits of their Social Security numbers (SSNs). Our methodology inferred immigrant status by combining the first five digits of their SSN together with information on year of birth. The first five digits of the SSN pin down the year in which the SSN was assigned. Since practically all U.S. natives are assigned an SSN at birth or during their youth, individuals who receive an SSN in their 20s or later are highly likely to be immigrants.
