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Table 14 reports binary logit estimates of the me-principal equation, separately for principals and nonprincipals and by gender. As expected from the overall gender percentages, specifications pooled by sex (not shown) indicate that men are statistically significantly more likely to declare themselves the principal, among both principals and nonprincipals (significant beyond the .000 level among principals and beyond the .05 level in the smaller nonprincipals subsample), suggesting a certain male sense of entitlement and/or greater need of a status boost.

This male propensity to claim principal status is net of all the other characteristics included in the equation -- net of visa, origin area, and visa depression.

– Table 14 about here –

Visa depression inhibits the me-principal assertion, among both men and women and both principals and nonprincipals, attaining statistical significance in the men nonprincipals equation. Thus, if declaring oneself the principal helps to repair the self, then immigrants who

have endured visa depression cannot help themselves even in this way. It would seem that visa depression reduces the drive to assert oneself the principal, even among principals.

The two age variables are jointly highly statistically significant in both the sex-specific principals equations and borderline in the men’s nonprincipals equation. In these three

equations, the parabolas open downward, with peaks at 57 and 30 years among male principals and nonprincipals, respectively, and 79 among female principals. Thus, if, among principals, advancing age attenuates false modesty or increases knowledge, then women are on an unambiguously upward trajectory, while men hit a bound in their late fifties. Among

nonprincipals, however, appropriating principal status is a young man’s game, peaking early – before age thirty – and diminishing thereafter.

Visa class is highly statistically significant in all equations. Among principals of both sexes, the top three categories correctly identifying their principal status are employment and diversity principals and spouses of native-born citizens. These three categories are also

associated with some of the highest levels of schooling and English fluency (Table 4). Spouses of U.S. citizens and employment principals must be sufficiently fluent in English to have attracted a sponsor; and, while many employment and all diversity principals have a schooling requirement (albeit one that can be waived given occupational credentials), spouses of native-born U.S. citizens reflect Americans’ penchant for assortative mating in schooling (Jasso, Massey, Rosenzweig, and Smith 2000).

Meanwhile, the visa classes associated with the lowest probability of correctly identifying principal status are spouses of LPRs, children (age 18-21) of U.S. citizens, husbands of foreign-born U.S. citizens, and mothers of U.S. citizens. Whether these cases reflect lack of information or insufficient understanding of the term “principal” and its translation into the 94 non-English languages used in the New Immigrant Survey, one can only speculate. But it is interesting that they are all family immigrants, that most of the sponsors are foreign-born, and that while some are youthful (those with the child of U.S. citizen visa), others may be quite old (mothers of U.S.

citizens).

Of course, the false modesty and self-effacement mechanism may also be operating; the spouses are all spouses of foreign-born persons, and the mothers and children are for the most part mothers and children of foreign-born persons. These results strongly complement the gender result in the pooled equations, and introduce an element of what may be called the immigration status hierarchy, with low-status persons -- dependent for their new visa on the higher-status naturalized U.S. citizens and previous immigrants -- displaying a reluctance to express their principalhood and making obeisance, as it were, to their status superiors.

The adjustee and adjusting-from-illegality variables are jointly statistically significant in both the sex-specific principals’ equations and both the men’s equations, thus resembling the age variables. Among principals, the two lowest probabilities of asserting principal status are among the formerly illegal EWI/WI immigrants and the set with a UU/UN code. In contrast, among male nonprincipals, the EWI immigrants are most likely to say they are principals. At first blush, these results appear to be at odds with each other. However, both responses have a powerful element in common. The EWI immigrants have lived for years in the shadows, and as a survival strategy have learned to dissemble and to conceal. Here we find principals reluctant to reveal their principal status and nonprincipals appropriating it. These may be vestigial behaviors, as the formerly illegal emerge from the shadows and start to shed the habits of illegality.

Childhood religion does not reach statistical significance. However, it is interesting that the highest probability of the me-principal assertion among women nonprincipals is found among Jewish and Muslim women; the lowest probabilities are found among Hindu and other-religion women. The Muslim effect is provocative, as it may signal a mechanism for coping with gender inequality.

The coefficients for parental relative family income, though not statistically significant, hint at an interesting pattern. Among principals of both sexes, those from average

socioeconomic backgrounds have the highest probability of correctly identifying that they are principals. Among male nonprincipals, the richest are most likely to erroneously claim that they are the principal.

Finally, schooling does not reach significance in any equation. We also tested for a direct effect of having documents lost, but did not find any. Lost documents, of course, operate through visa depression. The origin area fixed effects are statistically significant in three of the four sex-specific equations and borderline (prob value of .0521) in the men’s nonprincipals equation.

More broadly, the gender difference in making the me-principal assertion raises the question whether a similar mechanism may be operating in social surveys – men systematically overstating, women systematically understating, their schooling and earnings -- contributing to the observed gender gap. Either the male or female component of such a mechanism would have far-reaching consequences, as discussed by Ruel and Hauser (2007). It is not often the case that survey data permit comparison of a respondent’s real and reported characteristics. The NIS may thus be useful in assessing the broader conjecture.

6. RACE-ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF NEW IMMIGRANTS