Abstract
Studies on immigrants’ disadvantage focus predominantly on labour market perspectives. Immigrants’ poor education is a subject much less examined especially in a cross-national context. This paper examines differences in educational achievement between immigrants and natives across ten OECD countries. In English-speaking countries, immigrants fare best, while in Continental European countries they fare worse compared to natives. Whilst language skills seem to explain immigrants’ disadvantage in English-speaking countries, socioeconomic background and school segregation are further important determinants of immigrants’ gap in Continental Europe. Results presented are predominantly robust across three sources of achievement data: PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS.
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Helpful comments and suggestions by John Micklewright, David Culliford, James Raymer and three anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.
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Schnepf, S.V. Immigrants’ educational disadvantage: an examination across ten countries and three surveys. J Popul Econ 20, 527–545 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-006-0102-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-006-0102-y