Inequality of Learning amongst Immigrant Children in Industrialised Countries

Sylke Schnepf

No 3337, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Literature examining immigrants’ educational disadvantage across countries focuses generally on average differences in educational outcomes between immigrants and natives disguising thereby that immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group. The aim of this paper is to examine educational inequalities among immigrants in eight high immigration countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA. Results indicate that for almost all countries immigrants’ educational dispersion is considerably higher than for natives. For most countries higher educational dispersion derives from very low achieving immigrants. Quantile regression results reveal that at lower percentiles language skills impact more on educational achievement than at the top of the achievement distribution. Results are presented separately for immigrants of different age cohorts, varying time of immigrants’ residence in the host country and subject examined (maths and reading) highlighting thereby the different patterns found by immigrant group and achievement measure.

Keywords: education; educational inequalities; immigration; PISA; TIMSS; PIRLS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J15 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Working Paper: Inequality of learning amongst immigrant children in industrialised countries (2008)
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