Access to Post‐Secondary Education In Canada Among The Children of Canadian Immigrants

Abstract

This paper exploits the extremely rich Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) data to investigate access to post‐secondary education (PSE) among the children of immigrants in Canada. The YITS respondents considered to be the children of immigrants in this paper include: i) those who came to this country as immigrants themselves but arrived early enough to complete their primary schooling and take advantage of PSE opportunities in Canada and ii) those who were born in Canada to parents who were immigrants. The results show that these first and second generation immigrants are, overall, considerably more likely to attend PSE than non‐immigrant youth, that these differences are driven principally by higher university participation rates rather than by college attendance, and that the patterns vary a great deal by source country. The immigrant differences are partly explained by certain demographic characteristics (e.g., province of residence and living in a city), by immigrants’ parents’ relatively high education levels, and by other observable factors such as parental aspirations regarding their children’s education. However, substantial differences.