Frank Dawson Bean Jr. (born May 20, 1942) is Chancellor's Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.
Bean's 1987 book The Hispanic Population of the United States (with Marta Tienda), was commissioned by the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census and the Russell Sage Foundation.
[5] The research provided what The New York Times described in a front-page story "the first authoritative estimate of the net annual flow of illegal Mexican workers into the United States.
His book America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity (with Gillian Stevens) introduced the idea that predominantly lower-skilled labor migrant groups like Mexicans experience delays in (but not blockage of) incorporation, especially when their members arrive as unauthorized entrants.
Showing that many incorporation processes for such groups do not substantially emerge until the third generation, the study won the 2003 American Sociological Association's Otis Dudley Duncan award for the best book in social demography.