Discussion paper

DP1461 Is Child Like Parent? Educational Attainment and Ethnic Origin

The speed at which immigrants assimilate is the subject of debate. Human capital formation plays a major role in this discussion. This paper compares the educational attainment of second generation immigrants to those of natives in the same age cohort. Evidence using a large German data set suggests ethnicity does matter: the size of the ethnic network has a positive effect on educational attainment, and a clear pattern is exhibited between countries-of-origin and educational attainment even in the second generation. For the children of the foreign-born, parental schooling plays no role in making educational choices. For Germans, however, contrary to the general findings in the literature, there is a statistically significant difference in favour of father?s education over mother?s education.

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Citation

Zimmermann, K and I Gang (1996), ‘DP1461 Is Child Like Parent? Educational Attainment and Ethnic Origin‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 1461. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp1461