Educational achievement of second-generation immigrants: an international comparison*

Abstract

This paper compares the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants with that of children born to native parents in several OECD countries. We show that the average gap in test scores of children of immigrants and natives differs widely across countries, and is strongly related to achievement differences in the parent generation. The disadvantage of immigrant children reduces, and even disappears for some countries, once we condition on parental background characteristics. A foreign language spoken at home is the single most important factor associated with the achievement gap. An alternative reference group to native children are children born to non-emigrants in the country of origin. We compare mathematics test scores of children of Turkish immigrants in several destination countries, to those of Turkish children in Turkey whose parents have not emigrated. We find that in most host countries, the test score achievement of the children of Turkish immigrants (although being lower than that of their native peers) is higher than that of children of their cohort in the home country. This is conditional and unconditional on parental background characteristics. The higher school- and peer- quality relative to that in the home country is a main determinant of the educational advantage of immigrant children. — Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini and Gianandrea Lanzara