On Ethnic Categories for Research in Israel: New Data on an Old Issue

Work revealing complex, changing ethnic constellations among Israeli Jews suggests that researchers re-examine the formation of ethnic inequality following the 1950s' immigrations. First, however, researchers must agree on (1) the operationalization of ethnicity, and (2) the starting points of different ethnic groups in the immigrant generation. Using Israel's 1961 census, I examine variation in educational attainment, and the education/occupation relationship, for Jews who arrived between 1948 and 1958. I find: (1) a three-category variable that recently replaced the older dichotomous variable is probably not appropriate for multigenerational research, (2) immigrants from Rumania, Iraq, and Poland constitute an informative, but as yet unused, comparison group, (3) ethnicity was probably a better predictor of educational attainment and market competitiveness for lower than higher educational and occupational strata.