The Causal Effect of Age at Migration on Youth Educational Attainment

Dominique Lemmermann and Regina Riphahn

No 908, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: We investigate the causal effect of age at migration on subsequent educational attainment in the destination country. To identify the causal effect we compare the educational attainment of siblings at age 21, exploiting the fact that they typically migrate at different ages within a given family. We consider several education outcomes conditional on family fixed effects. We take advantage of long running and detailed data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which entails an oversample of immigrants and provides information on language skills. We find significant effects of age at migration on educational attainment and a critical age of migration around age 6. The educational attainment of female immigrants responds more strongly to a high age at immigration than that of males. Also, language skills do not appear to be central for the causal connection between age at migration and educational attainment.

Keywords: Immigration; education; integration; school attainment; Germany; causal estimation; family fixed effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I21 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 p.
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The causal effect of age at migration on youth educational attainment (2018)
Working Paper: The causal effect of age at migration on youth educational attainment (2016)
Working Paper: The causal effect of age at migration on youth educational attainment (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp908

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