Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2019

Abstract

Is having one native-born parent an advantage for the child of an immigrant? Much of the classical literature on immigrant assimilation would suggest that children with one native-born and one foreign-born parent (generation 2.5) should fare better than those whose parents are bothforeign-born (generation 2.0) Generation 2.5 individuals should have greater access to native networks, face less discrimination, and better bicultural awareness. Despite these seeming advantages, recent studies suggestthe opposite,withgeneration2.5havingworse educational outcomes thantheirgeneration 2.0 counterparts. Inthis paper,weutilize propensityscore matching to evaluate differences in educational outcomes between these two groups. We estimate that on average, generation2.5havenearlyhalfayearlesseducationthantheirgeneration2.0counterpartsdespite having better-educated parents onaverage. A number of explanations for this are explored, witha higher degree of bilingualism for generation 2.0,foreign-bornparents investing more inchildren's education, and access to highly skilled immigrant networks being the most promising explanations.

Journal Title

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

ISSN

2334-282X

Publisher

Middle East Economic Association and Loyola University Chicago

Volume

21

Issue

1

Comments

Presentation of the articles in the Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies was made possible by a limited license granted to Loyola University Chicago and Middle East Economics Association from the authors who have retained all copyrights in the articles.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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