Migrant ancestry drives US technology adoption and growth
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Tarek Alexander Hassan, Aakash Kalyani, and Juan Cruz Lopez Del Valle analyzed 13 million patents from 1887 to 2024 to determine how foreign ideas impact U.S. innovation.
The researchers constructed a network tracing the origins of technologies cited in new patents, revealing a strong link between the historical presence of migrants from specific countries and the adoption of technologies originating from those places.
They found that 54% of U.S. technologies incorporate at least one foreign idea, with the most impactful technologies relying heavily on inputs from abroad. Counties with greater historical exposure to knowledge from a foreign country demonstrated increased absorption of technologies from that country, leading to a significant rise in subsequent U.S. inventions building on those technologies. This influence extends beyond quantity, also shaping the type of innovation.
U.S. counties tended to lead in technologies connected to the foreign ideas already present in their local knowledge base, and shifts in the source countries of these ideas coincided with a geographic shift in American innovation away from traditional centers. The researchers also observed long-term effects on employment, with counties that adopted more foreign ideas experiencing sustained job growth in related fields decades later.
