From Parent to Child? Transmission of Educational Attainment Within Immigrant Families: Methodological Considerations

• Published in: Demography Vol. 52; no. 2; pp. 543 - 567
• Main Authors: Luthra, Renee Reichl, Soehl, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer 01.04.2015; Springer US; Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Acculturation; Adolescent; Adult; Assimilation; Bias; Children & youth; Demography; Education; Educational attainment; Educational Status; Emigrants and Immigrants - education; Emigrants and Immigrants - statistics & numerical data; Ethnic Groups; Ethnicity; Families & family life; Female; Generations; Geography; Human capital; Humans; Immigrants; IMMIGRATION; Male; Medicine/Public Health; Noncitizens; Parents; Parents & parenting; Population; Population Economics; Social Sciences; Sociology; United States; Young Adult; United States; United States > US; USA; Assimilation; Second generation; Immigration; Ecological fallacy; Educational transmission
• ISSN: 0070-3370; 1533-7790
• DOI: 10.1007/s13524-015-0376-3

One in five U.S. residents under the age of 18 has at least one foreign-born parent. Given the large proportion of immigrants with very low levels of schooling, the strength of the intergenerational transmission of education between immigrant parent and child has important repercussions for the future of social stratification in the United States. We find that the educational transmission process between parent and child is much weaker in immigrant families than in native families and, among immigrants, differs significantly across national origins. We demonstrate how this variation causes a substantial overestimation of the importance of parental education in immigrant families in studies that use aggregate data. We also show that the common practice of "controlling" for family human capital using parental years of schooling is problematic when comparing families from different origin countries and especially when comparing native and immigrant families. We link these findings to analytical and empirical distinctions between group-and individual-level processes in intergenerational transmission.