Abstract
Using new direct measures of numeracy and literacy skills among 85,875 adults in 17 Western countries, we find that foreign-born adults have lower mean skills than native-born adults of the same age (16 to 64) in all of the examined countries. The gaps are small, and vary substantially between countries. Multilevel models reveal that immigrant populations’ demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, employment, and language proficiency explain about half of the cross-national variance of numeracy and literacy skills gaps. Differences in origin countries’ average education level also account for variation in the size of the immigrant-native skills gap. The more protective labor markets in immigrant-receiving countries are, the less well immigrants are skilled in numeracy and literacy compared to natives. For those who migrate before their teens (the 1.5 generation), access to an education system that accommodates migrants’ special needs is crucial. The 1 and 1.5 generation have smaller numeracy and literacy skills gaps in more ethnically diverse societies.
Highlights
This paper explores disparities in numeracy and literacy skills between adult immigrants and natives in 17 Western countries
How does controlling for these characteristics contribute to explaining the overall gap between first and 1.5 generation migrants and natives? We focus on numeracy to show how this works
We have shown that adult immigrants are less skilled than non-immigrants in all but one of the 17 Western countries we examined
Summary
This paper explores disparities in numeracy and literacy skills between adult immigrants and natives in 17 Western countries. Quantitative analyses of contextual explanations for disparities in numeracy and literacy skills between adult first generation immigrants and natives are scarce and usually on a single receiving country, such as Canada [7], the Netherlands [29], or the US [30] This limits their use for testing hypotheses about destination country differences. The purpose of the analyses is not to predict immigrant literacy or numeracy skills, but to analyze how their skills compare to natives in various countries This allows us to we test a variety of social-scientific theories explaining skills disparities between natives and immigrants, including assimilation theory [33], theories on the relevance of origin country differences, ethnic contact theory [34,35], constrict theory [36], and institutional theories that point toward the relevance of educational and labor market institutions. Our analyses explore the relevance of origin countries’ average educational attainment in predicting cross-national variation in numeracy and literacy skill gaps between natives and first generation immigrants
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