Editing Italian Americans (section)

=== Economic and Social Conditions ===
[[File:21c Amadeo P Gianni USA stamp.jpg|thumb|right|upright|1973 U.S. postage stamp featuring [[Amadeo Giannini]]]]
Italian Americans have played a prominent role in the economy of the United States, and have founded companies of great national importance, such as [[Bank of America#Bank of Italy|Bank of America]] (by [[Amadeo Giannini]] in 1904), [[Qualcomm]], [[Subway (restaurant)|Subway]], [[Home Depot]], and [[Airbnb]] among [[List of Italian American business people|many others]]. Italian Americans have also made important contributions to the growth of the U.S. economy through their business expertise.  Italian Americans have served as CEO's of numerous major corporations, such as the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation by [[Lee Iacocca]], IBM Corporation by [[Samuel Palmisano]], Lucent Technologies by [[Patricia Russo]], the New York Stock Exchange by [[Richard Grasso]], Honeywell Incorporated by [[Michael Bonsignore]], and Intel by [[Paul Otellini]].  Economist [[Franco Modigliani]] was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Economics]] "for his pioneering analyses of [[saving]] and of [[financial market]]s."<ref>[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1985/press.html Press Release], Nobel Prize Organisation, October 15, 1985</ref>  Economist [[Eugene Fama]] was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2013 for his contribution to the empirical analysis of portfolio theory, asset pricing, and the [[efficient-market hypothesis]].

About two-thirds of America's Italian immigrants arrived during 1900–1914. Many were of agrarian backgrounds, with little formal education and industrial skills, who became manual laborers heavily concentrated in the cities. Others came with traditional Italian skills as tailors; barbers; bricklayers; stonemasons and stone cutters; marble, tile, and terrazzo workers; fishermen; musicians; singers; shoemakers and shoe repairers; cooks and bakers; carpenters; grape growers; wine makers; silk makers; and dressmakers and seamstresses. Others came to provide for the needs of the immigrant communities, notably doctors, dentists, midwives, lawyers, teachers, morticians, priests, nuns, and brothers. Many of the skilled workers found work in their specialty, first in the Italian enclaves and eventually in the broader society. Traditional skills were often passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter.

By the second generation, approximately 70 percent of the men had [[blue-collar worker|blue-collar]] jobs, and the proportion was down to approximately 50 percent in the third generation, according to surveys in 1963.<ref name="HEAEG1980">{{cite encyclopedia |year=1980 |encyclopedia=Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |url=https://archive.org/details/harvardencyclope00ther |last=Nelli |first=Humbert S. |editor-last=Thernstrom |editor-first=Stephan |editor-link=Stephan Thernstrom |pages=545–560 |isbn=0-674-37512-2 |oclc=1038430174 |editor2-last=Orlov |editor2-first=Ann |editor3-last=Handlin |editor3-first=Oscar |editor-link3=Oscar Handlin |article=Italians}}</ref> By 1987, the level of Italian American income exceeded the national average, and since the 1950s, it grew faster than any other ethnic group except the Jews.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Frank M. Sorrentino |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=roDRYQV5etUC&pg=PA259 |title=The Review of Italian American Studies |author2=Jerome Krase |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-7391-0159-9 |page=259}}</ref> By 1990, according to the U.S. census, more than 65 percent of Italian Americans were employed as managerial, professional, or [[White-collar worker|white-collar]] workers. In 1999, the median annual income of Italian-American families was $61,300, while the median annual income of all American families was $50,000.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Profile of Today's Italian Americans: A Report Based on the Year 2000 Census |url=http://www.osia.org/documents/IA_Profile.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927000712/http://www.osia.org/documents/IA_Profile.pdf |archive-date=September 27, 2011 |access-date=July 21, 2011 |publisher=Order of the Sons of Italy in America}}</ref>

A [[University of Chicago]] study<ref>''Comparative Study of Fifteen Ethnic Groups'', University of Chicago Study, 1994</ref>  of 15 ethnic groups showed that Italian Americans were among those groups having the lowest percentages of divorced people, unemployed people, people on welfare, and people incarcerated. On the other hand, they were among those groups with the highest percentages of two-parent families, elderly family members still living at home, and families who eat together on a regular basis.