Why and How Does Source Country Matter? The Effects of Home Countries and Immigrant Communities on Foreign-Born Student Achievement

Abstract

Objective: This paper explores the effect of the economic conditions of source countries and the human capital characteristics of coethnic immigrant communities on foreign-born students' reading and math achievement.Methods: We use data on New York City public school foreign-born students from 39 countries merged with Census data on the characteristics of the city's immigrants, and United Nations data on the economic conditions of countries. We estimate regressions of student achievement on home country and coethnic immigrant community characteristics, controlling for student and school attributes.Results: Children from middle income nations and nations where English is an official language have lower reading scores than students from other nations, though no such effects are observed for math. Children from immigrant communities with higher levels of income and educational attainment perform better in school than children from other communities. Yet children in highly English proficient immigrant communities test slightly lower than children from less proficient communities.