A 2024 report presents the greater Boston area as thriving on the rise of the immigrant population.

The foreign-born share of the Boston-area population was about 33% in 1900, declining to 13% by 1970, rising again to 19% in 2000, and now about 29%. (This share is equal to that of New York City, double that of Atlanta and Dallas, and 50% higher than that of Seattle.)

Today’s largest groups are from China, the Dominican Republic, India, Brazil, and Haiti. Between 2010–2021, immigrants offset domestic outmigration. Educational attainment is high, with 43% holding a college degree or more. This is 8 percentage points higher than all foreign born and U.S born over the age of 24 in the U.S. About 20% have an advanced degree beyond a bachelors, which is 5 percentage points higher than all foreign born and U.S. born in the U.S.

The hourglass profile of immigrants: A quarter of STEM workers and 30% of medical doctors in the greater Boston area are foreign born. 64% of Chinese have a college degree. Some 35% of persons from the Dominican Republic have college degrees. But a truer measure of economic dispersion is the poverty level of area households: 35% for Hispanics, 27% for Asians, and 7% for white households.   These figures suggest that the classic hourglass of immigrants is present: relative to U.S. born, more are either poor or highly educated. It does, however, appear that second generation immigrants are close to the median of all Greater Boston households in income. This second generation phenomenon is expected.