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Benefits of Education at the Intensive Margin: Childhood Academic Performance and Adult Outcomes among American Immigrants

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Abstract

Using the Children of the Immigrants Longitudinal Study, we examine the association between education at the intensive margin and twenty pecuniary and non-pecuniary adult outcomes among first- and second-generation American immigrant youth. Education at the intensive margin is measured by two widely used standardized math and reading test scores, national percentile rankings on these tests, and cumulative grade point average (GPA) in both middle and high school. Our findings provide evidence that the academic achievement of immigrant children in early adolescence is an accurate predictor of later life outcomes. We also examine a novel hypothesis that relative academic performance of immigrant children in high school compared to middle school, which could be an indicator of change in adolescent aspirations and motivation as well as the degree of adaptation and assimilation to the host country, has an effect on their adult outcomes even after controlling for the levels of academic performance in middle and high school. The results suggest that an improvement in GPA from middle school to high school is associated with favorable adult outcomes. Several sensitivity tests confirm the robustness of these findings.

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Notes

  1. There are several studies that use the CILS data to explore the relationship between academic performance in childhood and adult well-being outcomes [Portes et al. 2005; Rumbaut 2005; Haller et al. 2011; Portes & Rivas 2011]. However, these studies focus on a limited number of adult outcomes, certain geographical areas, and ethnicities, or consider only one or two measures of academic achievement. Using several measures of academic achievement in middle and high school, our study provides a comprehensive examination of indicators reflecting various aspects of adult well-being.

  2. Delaney et al. [2011] find a strong positive relationship between student expectations during college and adult socioeconomic status, which persists even after controlling for a rich set of covariates including previous academic performance. Feliciano and Rumbaut [2005] conclude that early educational expectations and aspirations are important predictors of completing schooling and occupational choices for American immigrant youth.

  3. Previous literature considers academic performance as an indicator of assimilation and adaptation of immigrant children into the host country [Zhou 1997].

  4. Nor did we find any studies that investigate this hypothesis in the context of natives.

  5. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that California has the largest share of the immigrant population in the United States with 26.2 percent and Florida ranks fifth with 16.7 percent in 2000 (Source: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/60xx/doc6019/11-23-Immigrant.pdf).

  6. See Portes and Rumbaut [2001] for detailed discussion on the data set.

  7. In order to account for any unobserved school characteristics, such as different grading scales, we estimate a school fixed effects model. Utilizing school fixed effects does not change the main results.

  8. We also compare individuals who left the sample in the second round to those who left the sample in the third round in terms of their characteristics measured in the first round. The unreported descriptive statistics suggest that individuals who dropped out of the sample in the second round are not significantly different from those who left the sample in the third round.

  9. The descriptive statistics indicate that 774 out of 4,243 immigrant children interviewed in the first two rounds experienced a change in their living conditions between Rounds 1 and 2.

  10. The key identifying assumption requires that a change in living conditions between Rounds 1 and 2 does not have a direct impact on the adult outcomes. We use a wide range of control variables in the econometric model to rule out any direct effect of the instrument on the adult outcomes. Moreover, the adult outcomes and instrument are not measured contemporaneously but with a lag of 7–10 years.

  11. Portes et al. [2005], Rumbaut [2005], and Heckman et al. [2006] also find that there is no statistically significant relationship between adolescent academic performance and adult criminal behavior.

  12. The authors measure downward assimilation by using a Downward Assimilation Index, which is created by taking into account six outcomes: dropping out of high school, not working or attending school, being under the poverty line, teenage childbearing, arrest, and incarceration.

  13. Dougherty [2007] suggests that if two highly collinear variables (in our case middle and high school GPAs) are conceptually similar, the potential multicollinearity issue could be avoided by including a variable that combines those variables into an overall index. Therefore, we use the average value of middle and high school GPAs rather than including them individually.

  14. The results when we applied the Heckman correction are not presented here, but are available upon request from the authors.

  15. The results based on the new specification are presented in Table 10 of the IZA Discussion Paper No. 8697 (http://ftp.iza.org/dp8697.pdf).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Richard B. Freeman and conference participants at the Society of Labor Economists 2014 annual meeting, the Southern Economic Association 2013 annual meeting and participants of Faculty Seminar Series at the TAMU-CC for their valuable comments. Thanks to Anne Marie Jennings for editorial assistance.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table A1

Table A1 Variable definitions

Table A2

Table A2 Correlations between measures of academic performance

Table A3

Table A3 First-generation immigrants’ (non-US-born) adult outcomes: Extended specification

Table A4

Table A4 Second-generation immigrants’ (US-born) adult outcomes: Extended specification

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Gevrek, D., Gevrek, Z. & Guven, C. Benefits of Education at the Intensive Margin: Childhood Academic Performance and Adult Outcomes among American Immigrants. Eastern Econ J 41, 298–328 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2015.6

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