Parental ethnic identity and educational attainment of second-generation immigrants

A lack of cultural integration is often blamed for hindering immigrant families' economic progression. This paper explores whether there are in fact long-term consequences by investigating intergenerational effects of parental ethnic identity on the next generation's human capital accumula...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of population economics Vol. 28; no. 4; pp. 965 - 1004
Main Author Schueller, Simone
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer 01.10.2015
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Academic achievement
Acculturation
Cultural differences
Cultural heritage
Cultural identity
Cultural integration
Culture
Demography
Economics
Economics and Finance
Education
Educational attainment
Ethnicity
Feelings
Host country
Human capital
Immigrants
Investments
Labor Economics
Level of education
Minority & ethnic groups
Noncitizens
Original Paper
Parents & parenting
Population
Population Economics
Second-generation immigrants
Self esteem
Social Policy
Society
Sociology
Studies
Success
Germany
Ethnic identity
Second-generation immigrants
Education
I21
Sibling fixed-effects
J16
J15
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Summary:A lack of cultural integration is often blamed for hindering immigrant families' economic progression. This paper explores whether there are in fact long-term consequences by investigating intergenerational effects of parental ethnic identity on the next generation's human capital accumulation. Results based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) indicate a positive role of both parental majority as well as minority identity. I find differential parental roles with impacts of majority identity working through mothers and minority identity effects being specific to fathers. While the positive effect of maternal majority identity appears to be closely related to language skills, the beneficial effect of paternal minority identity is consistent throughout various robustness checks and likely to be related to higher levels of children's feelings of self-esteem. Overall, the results point at integrated, rather than separated or assimilated family environments to be most conductive for educational success of the second generation.
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ISSN:0933-1433
1432-1475
DOI:10.1007/s00148-015-0559-7