Analyzing Educational Achievement Differences between Second‐Generation Immigrants: Comparing Germany and German‐Speaking Switzerland

In this study, I provide evidence that the educational achievement of second‐generation immigrants in German‐speaking Switzerland is greater than in Germany. The impact of the first‐generation immigrants' destination decision on their offspring's educational achievement seems to be much more important than has been recognized by the existing literature. I identify the test score gap between these students that cannot be explained by differences in individual and family characteristics. Moreover, I show how this gap evolves over the test score distribution and how the least favorably endowed students fare. My results suggest that the educational system of Switzerland, relative to the German system, enhances the performance of immigrants' children substantially. This disparity is largest when conditioning on the language spoken at home, and prevails even when comparing only students whose parents migrated from the same country of origin.     

Examination performance in Scottish secondary schools: an ordered logit approach

This paper analyses the determinants of educational outcomes for Scottish secondary schools. Using an ordered logit model with data on school examination performance for pupils in the last year of compulsory education, separate equations are estimated for 1993–1994 and 1998–1999. The empirical results, in line with previous British studies, underline the importance of family, peer group and school influences in determining educational outcomes. They cast doubt, however, on suggestions that there is an ‘optimal’ size of school.     

Second‐Generation Immigrants in the Swedish Labour Market

This study focuses on the labour market performance among second‐generation immigrants in Sweden. One motivation behind the analysis is that it gives insight into the long‐term consequences of immigration. Labour market performance relates the probability of having a job, referred to here as a threshold effect and to the differences in income from work, given that a person is in the market and is referred to as an income from work effect. We have shown that a clear threshold effect of being a second‐generation immigrant exists and that different groups of second‐generation immigrants perform differently in the Swedish labour market.     

Early labour-market experiences of second-generation immigrants in Sweden

This article investigates second generation immigrant's early labour-market performances in Sweden. To study their labour-market success we estimate dynamic transition rate models–Cox type proportional hazards, in a competing risk framework using register based panel-data set. Our results reveal that parental resources affect not only second-generation immigrants’ continuing education but also their later labour-market success. The study verifies that finding a job is difficult for second-generation immigrants and the significant unobserved-heterogeneity parameter estimate may indicate discrimination. As a whole, second-generation immigrants have worse labour-market performances compared to their native-born counterparts.     

Upper Secondary School Completion and the Business Cycle

Previous evidence suggests that enrollment in post‐compulsory education increases (decreases) in cyclical downturns (upturns). However, little evidence exists on whether enrollment is successfully transformed into completed education. This paper adds to the literature by analyzing the relationship between completion of upper secondary education and regional unemployment using Norwegian regional panel data on students graduating from compulsory school between 1981 and 2004. We find robust evidence that completion rates are countercyclical. Our results suggest that poor labor‐market conditions when starting upper secondary education have a lasting effect and motivate students to stay in school and graduate.     

基于异质性随机前沿模型的人力资本创新效应研究

运用异质性随机前沿模型实证分析了人力资本对中国区域创新效率及其稳定性的影响。结果表明：人力资本存量对区域创新效率及其稳定性具有显著促进作用,高中、本科和研究生人力资本增加能促进区域创新效率提高,受教育程度越高,作用越大,但大专人力资本对区域创新效率有抑制作用,人力资本教育结构对区域创新效率的稳定性也有显著影响;人力资本存量增加能提高人力资本的创新效应,在东、中和西部存在显著异质性。最后提出,可通过增加义务教育年限、提高人力资本水平;优化人力资本教育结构,提高高层次人力资本的比重;加大R&D资源投入,形成人才和资金的有效匹配等政策措施,促进区域创新效率提升。     

Measuring heterogeneity in the returns to education using an education reform

In this paper, we explore the impact of a mandatory education reform as well as pre-reform availability of schools above the mandatory level, on educational attainment and returns to education in Norway. We contribute to the existing literature by focusing on the heterogeneity of the impact of reforms. Our results indicate that increased compulsory education from seven to nine years increased the general level of education beyond the compulsory education. We also find that the effect of family background on educational attainment was weaker after the reform. The average treatment effect on returns to education is surprisingly high for education of intermediate duration. This means that increasing the general level of education potentially generates high returns in the form of wages. We also find that the effect of treatment on the treated on the returns to education is 1-4 percentage points higher than the average treatment effect.     

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

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.     

The effect of school resources on educational attainment: evidence from Denmark

We investigate the effect of school inputs in primary and lower secondary schools on the probability of eventually passing upper secondary or vocational education. Danish administrative register data for a large number of young people and their parents are used. Educational outcome and controls for family background are measured at the individual level, whereas school expenditure and controls for municipal socioeconomic characteristics are measured at the municipal level. As unobserved characteristics may be correlated for pupils within the same municipality, we estimate linear probability and logit models with random municipal‐specific effects in addition to standard OLS and logit models. With the full sample of pupils and the full set of controls, we find that expenditure per pupil has a statistically significant, but rather small, positive effect on educational attainment. Effects of teacher–pupil ratios are less significant. The expenditure effects are generally higher for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.     

Psychological Traits and Earnings Differentials among Men: A Study of Second‐generation Immigrants in Sweden*

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of psychological traits on earnings differentials between second‐generation immigrants and individuals with native‐born parents. The study is based on a cohort of men born in 1973 and residing in Sweden in 1990. In this paper, we use an indicator of psychological ability measured in connection with the military enlistment test in Sweden. The results show that the measure of psychological traits is an important determinant of earnings at the age of 30. Using an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we find that earnings differentials between second‐generation immigrants and individuals with native‐born parents are explained, to a large degree, by differences in endowments of psychological traits.     

The educational attainment of immigrants: trends and implications

"This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. Censuses to study trends in educational attainment of immigrants relative to natives. Immigrants have become relatively less highly educated, but have become more highly educated in an absolute sense. The effects of changes in relative educational attainment between immigrants and natives on earnings are studied. Educational differences are found to explain more than half the observed wage gap between the two groups. The paper also allows for non-linearities in returns to education. Sheepskin effects influence earnings in different ways for natives and immigrants. Differences in returns to pre- and post-migration education also appear. The paper also finds evidence that immigrants crowd natives out of education, although the effects are stronger in secondary than in postsecondary education."     

Pro‐social leadership under authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is regarded as being unaccountable for people's needs, but few studies have documented how authoritarian countries balance their policy goals. China is known to use a promotion system to incentivize local leaders to develop the economy, while neglecting social spending. This paper documents that more leaders having a liberal arts background have been promoted as top provincial leaders. After carefully ruling out other channels, we provide evidence that the shift of top provincial leaders’ college educational backgrounds from science/technology to liberal arts/social science has increased fiscal expenditure shares on science, education, culture and public health and cut economic construction expenditures accordingly. The finding is mainly driven by the post‐1994 period, when local leaders had stronger incentives for economic growth. This indicates that Chinese top authorities are promoting more pro‐social local leaders when providing pro‐growth incentives in general.     

Education on the cheap: The long-run effects of a free compulsory education reform in rural china

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of a free compulsory education reform in rural China on individuals’ educational attainment, cognitive achievement and health. We exploit the cross-province variation in the roll-out of the reform and apply a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the causal effects of the reform on the outcomes. We find that the reform exposure, measured by the number of semesters that an individual is supposed to be exposed to the free compulsory education, is positively associated with individuals’ educational attainment and cognitive achievement measured by math test scores in early adulthood. The reform effects on educational attainment become greater in the longer term. Moreover, the reform effect on educational attainment is stronger for individuals with less-educated fathers.     

Neighbourhood effects,preference heterogeneity and immigrant educational attainment

This paper investigates differences between the educational attainment of immigrants, children of immigrants and native-born individuals in Australia by using Australian Youth Survey (AYS) data combined with aggregate Australian Census data. Differences in educational attainment are decomposed into: (i) typical demographic and socio-economic sources common to all ethnic groups; (ii) unobserved region of residence and region of origin effects; and (iii) neighbourhood effects such as degree and ethnic concentration of particular ethnic groups in different neighbourhoods. A theoretical model incorporating these effects is proposed but structural estimation is not possible for lack of appropriate data. Instead, a reduced form methodology is proposed and employed. The empirical results identify positive ethnic neighbourhood effects in high school completion and university enrolment for some immigrant groups in Australia, in particular first and second generation immigrants from Asia. The results indicate that it is not just the size of the ethnic network but the ‘quality’ of the network that is important.     

发行义务教育公债是弥补中国义务教育经费投入不足问题的可行之策

教育经费投入不足一直是困扰中国教育事业发展的重大问题。随着中国义务教育免费政策的出台与实施,教育公平的推进和义务教育质量的提高,义务教育的建设与发展需要更多的资金投入。而中国逐年增长的教育经费很难满足目前义务教育的需要。因此,从义务教育经费的缺口分析入手,提出发行教育公债是解决义务教育经费投入不足的一种有效手段。     

Ethnic externalities in education and second-generation immigrants

I analyse the role of ethnic and native human capital – defined, respectively, as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups and of natives within a specific region – and of ethnic concentrations in the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in Germany. Compared to natives’ children, parents’ education has a small and insignificant effect on second-generation immigrants’ education. Ethnic concentrations have a negative effect, while ethnic capital is insignificant. The effect of native capital, too, is insignificant but much larger in magnitude than the effect of ethnic capital. For women, mother’s education is relatively more important. For men, ethnic concentrations constitute a stronger impediment to educational attainment than for women.     

Collectivism in the labor market: Evidence from second generation immigrants in the United States

This study investigates the role of collectivism on labor market outcomes in an individualist country. We explore collectivism as an intergenerationally transmitted cultural value and analyze its explanatory power for the economic outcome of 21,000 male homogamous second generation immigrants in the US. Our collectivism proxy is derived from the country of ancestry’s historical disease environment because collectivistic values have been particularly advantageous in countries with a greater prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Employing this new collectivism proxy that identifies collectivism more precisely than previously used cultural proxies, we find that higher scores of collectivism are associated with higher labor force participation and income earned in the US. The results on income are channeled through the number of hours worked and self-selection into jobs that require collectivistic traits. By analyzing the labor market performance of second generation immigrants, we are the first to show an occupational selection along cultural skills implying that second generation immigrants sort into occupations that demand skills on which they have a “cultural comparative advantage”.     

Happiness,religion and economic transition

In an important paper, Lelkes (2006) examines the impact of transition on happiness in Hungary using two Hungarian household survey datasets for the years 1992 and 1998. In particular, Lelkes examines the impact of religious behaviour on self‐reported well‐being. Using ordered logit models, Lelkes estimates and presents the marginal effect associated with membership in the highest ‘fully satisfied’ category, and finds that religious people have a consistently higher probability of being ‘fully satisfied’ than others. This effect is stable in the 1992 and 1998 samples. The goal of this article is to expand and extend Lelkes' earlier work in several ways. First, we use a different dataset. Second, we examine the effect of religious behaviour on well‐being after transition not only for Hungary, but also for Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Third, unlike Lelkes, we have access to information indicating whether respondents report being financially better off after transition. With a different dataset, additional country samples, and a measure of financial well‐being, we are able to confirm and extend Lelkes' finding that religious behaviour is associated with improved well‐being after transition in all countries we examine.     

Age at immigration and educational attainment of young immigrants

This paper investigates up to what immigration age the educational attainment of young immigrants in the Netherlands is similar to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants. The borderline immigration age appears to depend on gender and country of origin.     

The educational and labor market returns to preschool attendance in Austria

Preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success, mothers’ labor market participation, and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce, particularly in Europe. Using data from the 2011 Austrian European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we contribute to this literature by studying the effects of having attended preschool for the adult Austrian population. We find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on later educational attainment, the probability of working full time, hourly wages, and the probability that the mother is in the labor market. Full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution benefit less than those in the middle. Women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time. Other disadvantaged groups (second generation migrants; people with less educated parents) also often benefit more in terms of education and work.