Joining a consumer society: Russian immigrant versus American materialism

Abstract

Abstract Regardless of their home country, immigrants to the United States often arrive in search of personal freedom and a share of the riches of this country. Prior research has identified a range of knowledge and skills that immigrants must acquire in order to navigate such a consumer society. One aspect of joining a consumer society that has not been addressed, however, is the role of material goods in one's life. The purpose of this paper is to examine the changing role, if any, of material goods in the lives of immigrants arriving in the United States from a non‐consumer society and to compare the level of materialism among such immigrants with that of Americans. The results of a study of 278 Soviet‐era Russian immigrants and 200 native‐born Americans indicate that at the time the immigrants arrived, they were just as materialistic as Americans and became no more materialistic, the longer they lived in the United States. Both Americans and Russians, however, became less materialistic with age. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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