Gender Empowerment and Educational Attainment of US Immigrants and Their Home-Country Counterparts

Yunsun Huh ()

Feminist Economics, 2017, vol. 23, issue 2, 120-145

Abstract: This paper examines the educational self-selection of immigrants to the United States across forty-two countries of origin and analyzes determinants of selectivity, including home-country gender status (as measured by the United Nations’ Gender Empowerment Measure [GEM]). Measuring educational self-selection, the study uses data from the 2006 American Community Survey and the 2000 and 2014 Barro–Lee Educational Attainment Measure to construct the Net Difference Index between immigrants and nonmigrants. It compares the educational attainment difference between immigrants and nonmigrants who remain in the home country and demonstrates that immigrants to the US are more educated than their home-country counterparts across all immigrant groups (positive selection). Regression results further indicate that higher gender inequality in the home country influences more highly educated women to migrate. The paper also confirms that higher migration costs and lower income inequality in the home country influence more highly educated individuals to migrate.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13545701.2016.1198044 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:femeco:v:23:y:2017:i:2:p:120-145

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2016.1198044

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

More articles in Feminist Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().