The educational attainment of second generation immigrants in Canada: Evidence from SLID

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Résumé (français)

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Résumé (anglais)

This paper examines differences in educational attainment between natives and children of immigrants to Canada. We introduce two definitions of second generation immigrants: The first considers all children with at least one immigrant parent to be second-generation immigrants, while the second definition requires that both parents were foreign-born. In the data, regardless of which definition we use, immigrants’ children have more education, on average, than their native counterparts. To analyze educational attainments, we first outline a simple economic model of schooling and then proceed by estimating a sequence of ordered discrete choice models. The estimated marginal effects suggest that a part of the observed educational difference between natives and second-generation immigrants can be explained by differences in family background, such as parents’ education and mother tongue, but a significant difference remains even after controlling for these characteristics. Moreover, the educational difference prevails even when we apply the narrower definition of second-generation immigrants.