Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment: evidence from Switzerland on natives and second-generation immigrants

This study applies rich data from the 2000 Swiss census to investigate the patterns of intergenerational education transmission for natives and second-generation immigrants. The level of secondary schooling attained by youth aged 17 is related to their parents’ educational outcomes based on data on the entire Swiss population. Extending economic theories of child educational attainment, we derive hypotheses regarding the patterns of intergenerational education transmission. The data yield substantial heterogeneity in intergenerational transmission across population groups. Only a small share of this heterogeneity is explained by the predictions of economic theory.

The educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in The Netherland

Since the mid-1960s the Netherlands has had a positive net immigration, mainly because of man power recruitment from Turkey and Morocco and immigration from the former Dutch colony of Surinam. Immigrants havea weak labor market position, which is related to their educational leveland language skills. Children and grandchildren of immigrants are expected to have a better chance of integration into Dutch society. In this paper we investigate whether this is true with respect to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.The authors thank an anonymous referee and both editors for helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

The magnitude of educational disadvantage of indigenous minority groups in Australia

Indigenous groups are amongst the most disadvantaged minority groups in the developed world. This paper examines the educational disadvantage of indigenous Australians by assessing academic performance at a relatively early age. We find that, by the age of 10, indigenous Australians are substantially behind non-indigenous Australians in academic achievement. Their relative performance deteriorates further over the next 2 years. School and locality do not appear to be important determinants of the indigenous to non-indigenous achievement gap. However, geographic remoteness, indigenous ethnicity and language use at home have a marked influence on educational achievement. A current focus of Australian indigenous policy is to increase school resources. Our results suggest that this will not eliminate indigenous educational disadvantage on its own.

Nominal comparability is not enough: (In-)equivalence of construct validity of cross-national measures of educational attainment in the European Social Survey

Educational attainment is a core social background variable covered in each and every survey of individuals. Since educational institutions and qualifications are difficult to compare across countries, cross-national surveys pose a particular challenge to the measurement of educational attainment. This study performs a comparative construct validation of a number of cross-national measures of education using the European Social Survey. The measures comprise two versions of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), the education scheme developed in the project ‘Comparative Analysis of Social Mobility in Industrial Nations’ (CASMIN) and hypothetical as well as actual years of education. The first ISCED measure corresponds to the well-known main ISCED levels. The second one, the European Survey Version of ISCED (ES-ISCED) developed for this study, represents an effort to reflect different types of education within levels of education by considering ISCED sub-dimensions, most importantly ‘programme orientation’. Using linear regression models, it is shown how much explanatory power educational attainment loses when different cross-national variables are used, as compared to country-specific educational attainment variables (CSEVs), and how these losses vary across measures and countries. The dependent variable used for the construct validation is social status as measured by the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI). Results suggest that harmonisation always entails some loss of explanatory power for at least a few countries. However, there are clear performance differences between the comparable measures in terms of both the average amount of losses as well as the distribution of losses across countries. The use of actual years of education as well as the levels-only ISCED strongly attenuates the education-social status association on average, but also to very different degrees across countries. CASMIN and ES-ISCED fare considerably better: they show the lowest losses of explanatory power and the lowest variation of losses across countries. Hypothetical years of education lie in between. Some practical implications are then proposed, e.g. on how to implement cross-national measures of educational attainment in international surveys.     

Sibship size and educational attainment. A joint test of the Confluence Model and the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

Studies on family background often explain the negative effect of sibship size on educational attainment by one of two theories: the Confluence Model (CM) or the Resource Dilution Hypothesis (RDH). However, as both theories - for substantively different reasons - predict that sibship size should have a negative effect on educational attainment most studies cannot distinguish empirically between the CM and the RDH. In this paper, I use the different theoretical predictions in the CM and RDH on the role of cognitive ability as a partial or complete mediator of the effect of sibship size to distinguish the two theories and to identify a unique RDH effect on educational attainment. Using sibling data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and a random effect Instrumental Variable model I find that, in addition to a negative effect on cognitive ability, sibship size also has a strong negative effect on educational attainment which is uniquely explained by the RDH.     

Family size and educational attainment in England and Wales

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem.     

Selections and social selectivity on the academic track: A life-course analysis of educational attainment in Germany

Graduating from university is just the final step of an extended educational career. Sociological transition research has revealed that final educational attainment must be understood as the result of a sequence of successive decisions. With regard to graduation from university, one has to take into account that upper secondary school qualifications are required for enrolling in the first place, and in Germany, the decision for this kind of schooling is at a much earlier age. So where on the long way to the university degree does Germany ‘lose’ its potential academics and in particular its lower class children?     

Cohort effects in the educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Germany: An analysis of census data

Even though second generation immigrants make up ever increasing population shares in industrialized countries we know little about their social integration and wellbeing. This study focuses on the educational attainment of German born children of immigrants. Their schooling success still lags behind that of natives. This paper investigates school attendance and completed degrees of second generation immigrants and finds that even after controlling for characteristics the educational gap remains large and significant. The available evidence suggests that this group as a whole does not assimilate to native educational standards and instead increasingly falls behind.This research was completed while the author was guest at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. I am grateful for IZAs hospitality and particularly for the help of Thomas K. Bauer. I thank the anonymous referees and the editors for very helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

我国流动儿童生存和发展：问题与对策——基于2010年第六次全国人口普查数据的分析

文章利用2010年第六次全国人口普查数据,概括和分析全国流动儿童的人口学特征、迁移特征和受教育状况等关系流动儿童生存和发展的基本情况。流动儿童规模庞大、增长迅速、且分布高度集中,多数来自农村;跨省流动儿童约占三分之一;他们作为父母的随迁者已属于长期流动的人口;流动儿童的受教育状况有所好转,但情况依然不乐观．仍然有2．94％的义务教育阶段适龄流动儿童未按规定接受义务教育,流动儿童的学前教育和高中教育问题亟待解决。文章分析结论期望能为流动儿童各方面问题的解决提供基本的依据。     

加强成都市外来流动人口管理的对策研究

成都作为四川乃至整个西部首屈一指的大城市,对流动人口具有极大的吸引力,从而成为今后很长一段时间外来流动人口在西部的主要聚集地。在第五次全国人口普查资料的基础上,本文分析了外来人口给成都市社会经济发展带来的显著的影响,并对如何城市加强外来人口管理提出几点建议。     

中国城市外籍移民管理研究

近些年来,随着中国经济实力增强、移民者强烈的改变生活条件与生存环境的内在愿望以及其他原因,导致中国人口跨界转移改变了以往单向流动的格局,许多外籍移民涌入中国城市。虽然外籍移民的出现,会给中国城市带来一定的活力,但是由于这是一个新现象,因此,中国城市管理当局在管理外籍移民时存在着主观上认识不到位和管理制度不健全等方面的不足。为了解决这些不足,除了完善相关法律法规外,还应提高管理人员的综合素质,并采取趋同管理办法。     

Dealing with selection bias in educational transition models: The bivariate probit selection model

This paper proposes the bivariate probit selection model (BPSM) as an alternative to the traditional Mare model for analyzing educational transitions. The BPSM accounts for selection on unobserved variables by allowing for unobserved variables which affect the probability of making educational transitions to be correlated across transitions. We use simulated and real data to illustrate how the BPSM improves on the traditional Mare model in terms of correcting for selection bias and providing credible estimates of the effect of family background on educational success. We conclude that models which account for selection on unobserved variables and high-quality data are both required in order to estimate credible educational transition models.     

An Analysis of Educational Inequality in Taiwan After the Higher Education Expansion

Two major educational expansions in Taiwan have resulted in a remarkable improvement of human capital accumulation for the last three decades, which is consistent with the long-run goal of education in improving individual well-being and international competitiveness. This study focuses on the expansion of higher education starting from the late 1980s. As the number of higher-educated workers entering the labor market each year has increased rapidly, this higher education expansion policy has encountered some critiques from the public. Evidence shows that the incidence of over-educated workers in the labor market has been continuously increasing after the expansion, which is considered to be a short-run problem from the policy. We also find that the overall educational inequality drops sharply, which is mainly contributed by the within age group component after decomposing educational inequality using the decomposable Theil index. Along with a larger increase in average schooling for women, a larger reduction in educational inequality for women than for men implies women have benefited more than men from the policy and the educational inequality between men and women is narrowing.

1991年以来俄罗斯的中国移民构成分析

苏联解体后,俄罗斯境内的中国移民规模逐渐增大,随着俄罗斯经济社会的变化,中国移民的构成也变得更加多样和复杂。对俄罗斯边境地区四个州的中国移民情况调查表明,中国移民群体在移民类型、目的、法律地位、地区来源和去向、技术水平和行业分布等构成方面呈现出一定的特点。虽然中国的劳动移民在整体上还没有对俄罗斯劳动力市场和人口就业领域产生关键性的影响,但在俄罗斯东部,特别是在贸易、建筑业和农业等领域,移民的作用日益重要。     

乐观取向、社会服务使用与社会融合：香港新移民的一项探索性研究

本文基于对285名香港新移民的调查发现乐观取向、社会服务的使用是影响社会融合的重要因素,高乐观取向、更多使用社会服务的新移民社会融合程度更高。论文提出了相应的政策和服务建议。     

欧盟国家的中国大陆新移民述论

1978年改革开放以来,中国大陆新移民大量涌入欧洲,尤其是欧盟国家（本文专指前欧盟15国）,形成了自中国人移民欧洲以来,人数最多、持续时间最长,分布最广泛的一次移民潮,显示出与以往欧洲的华侨华人移民不同的特点与规律。由于新移民的增加,给欧洲华侨华人社会注入了新的血液,成为欧洲华侨华人新的增长点。     

Mixed marriage among immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom: Analysis of longitudinal data with missing information

This study investigates the formation of endogamous and exogamous marriages among immigrants and their descendants in the United Kingdom. We apply event history analysis to data from the Understanding Society study and use multiple imputation to determine the type of marriage for individuals with missing information on the origin of their spouse. The analysis shows, first, significant differences among immigrants and their descendants in the likelihood of marrying within and outside their ethnic groups. While immigrants from European countries have relatively high exogamous marriage rates, South Asians exhibit a high likelihood of marrying a partner from their own ethnic group; Caribbean people hold an intermediate position. Second, the descendants of immigrants have lower endogamous and higher exogamous marriage rates than their parents; however, for some ethnic groups, particularly South Asians, the differences across generations are small, suggesting that changes in marriage patterns have been slower than expected.     

Unequal transitions: Selection bias and the compensatory effect of social background in educational careers

Previous studies have shown that social background inequality differs among educational transitions and it is stronger for those transitions that involve a higher risk of social demotion. This paper focuses on two processes that may account for part of the observed differences in social background inequality across educational transitions. First, it studies how the family of origin might compensate for a ‘false step’ in the early stage of young people's educational careers. This compensatory effect of social background can be described as the likelihood of having ‘a second chance’ for unsuccessful educational transitions. Second, it focuses on two unobserved factors that might potentially bias the effect of social background across educational transitions. These are the students’ unobserved cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their unobserved anticipated choices of dropping out of the education system. Two issues – the compensatory effect of social background and selection bias in educational transitions – are addressed by estimating a probit model with sample selection for the transition to post-compulsory education in Spain.     

The transmission of social inequality: Examination of the linkages between family socioeconomic status in childhood and educational achievement in young adulthood

The present study examines the linkages between family socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood and educational achievement in young adulthood using data from a 25-year longitudinal study of a birth cohort of over 1000 New Zealand children. Structural equation modeling of the association between latent SES at birth and educational achievement by age 25 years showed evidence of a strong association between latent SES and later educational achievement. Much of this association was mediated via two pathways relating to child cognitive ability and family educational aspirations; family economic resources and school factors did not mediate the association. However, even when the major theoretical pathways were taken into account, a substantial component of the latent SES/educational achievement correlation remained unexplained.