Refugees and the Educational Attainment of Natives

Colin Green () and Jon Vaag Iversen

No 21-07, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: Increases in immigration raise a range of challenges for schools. Existing research primarily investigates the impact of immigrants on native test scores and demonstrates mixed results. Using Norwegian register data and narrow within-school, within-family comparisons, we demonstrate negative effects of refugees on native math performance, and no effect on English or Norwegian performance. The negative effects on mathematics are not present for other, non-refugee economic immigrants, and are concentrated amongst refugee children who themselves face the greatest educational difficulties. Our results suggest a need for targeted policy aimed at helping immigrant children most likely to face educational difficulties, and generate negative spillover effects. They also suggest caution in generalising results generated by specific immigrant, or even refugee, groups.

Keywords: Refugees; Educational Attainment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2021-06, Revised 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp21-07.pdf First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Refugees and the Educational Attainment of Natives (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:cepeow:21-07

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