Pre-school enrollment: an analysis by immigrant generation

There has been minimal research on the pre-school enrollment of immigrant children. Using 1990 U.S. Census data, this paper investigates pre-school enrollment of child immigrants, those who immigrated as children and the U.S.-born children of immigrants. The analysis is conducted using probit analysis. Pre-school enrollment is found to vary systematically with parental characteristics (income and education), immigrant generation, number of siblings, mother’s labor supply and country of origin. Among the foreign-born, differences in pre-school enrollment are analyzed by country of origin. Among the U.S.-born children of immigrants pre-school enrollment is greatest among those with both parents foreign born

Why is the payoff to schooling smaller for immigrants?

To answer the question, this paper uses the Over-Required-Under Education technique, a newdecomposition methodology and data on adult men from the 2000 US Census. Using the 510 three-digitoccupational categories, similar patterns emerge whether the mean or mode of education in the occupation is used as the typical (required) level. The partial effect of the occupation's typical schooling level is the same for immigrants and natives. About two thirds of the smaller effect of schooling on earnings is attributable to differences by nativity in the payoffs to over/under education. The remainder is largely due to the different distributions by nativity of over/under education. Favorable immigrant selectivity, especially among the least skilled, and to a lesser extent, limited transferability of foreign schooling, is largely responsible for these patterns. Avariety of tests of robustness are performed, including separate analyses for child and adult immigrants

Is the lower return to immigrants’ foreign schooling a postarrival problem in Canada?

Published versionUsing the 2006 Canadian Census, this paper investigates the lower return to immigrants’ foreign education credentials after adjusting for their occupational matching in hosting labor markets. We develop two continuous indices that quantify the matching quality of the native-born in both horizontal (fields of study) and vertical (educational degrees) dimensions. This allows us to separate the effects of immigrants’ occupational attainment and their foreign schooling quality on wage earnings by measuring immigrants’ occupational match relative to that of native-born. Our findings indicate that the lack of portability in immigrants’ foreign credentials may not be addressed effectively by post arrival policies as the results show that a significant and persistent poor matching quality for internationally educated immigrants cannot substantiate the lower return to their foreign education credentials

Returns to Foreign Language Skills in a Developing Country: The Case of Turkey

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of language knowledge, with a special focus on a country characterized by fast economic and social development. Although English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Turkey, we initially consider the economic value of different foreign languages among the employed males aged 25 to 65. We find positive and significant returns to proficiency in English and Russian, which increase with the level of competence. Knowledge of French and German also appears to be positively rewarded in the Turkish labor market, although their economic value seems mostly linked to an increased likelihood to hold specific occupations rather than increased earnings within occupations. Focusing on English, we also explore the heterogeneity in returns to different levels of proficiency by frequency of English use at work, birth-cohort, education, occupation and rural/urban location. The results are also robust to the endogenous specification of English language skills

Ethnic Identity and Educational Outcomes of German Immigrants and Their Children

Identity can be an important driving force for educational performance. Immigrants and their children face the challenge of identifying with their host country's culture. This paper examines whether young immigrants and their children who identify stronger with the German culture are more likely to increase their educational outcomes. I use a concept of ethnic identity which is designed to capture Germanness in immigrants' day-to-day routine - based on self-identification, language skills and cultural habits. The research design takes into account the issue of endogeneity of ethnic identity in an educational outcome equation by measuring education and identity at different moments and by using an endogenous latent factor methodology. The paper finds that identification with the German culture has an overall positive effect on educational outcomes and diminishes and renders the educational gap between immigrants and the second generation insignificant. The paper¿s results indicate that the second generation identifies stronger with the German culture than immigrants, no matter whether of German, European, Central European or Turkish background. Apart from the immigrant generation, own low educational attainment and high mother's educational attainment matter for identification with the German culture

Does Migration Make You Happy?:A Longitudinal Study of Internal Migration and Subjective Well-Being

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (RES-625-28-0001). This project is part of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC). Financial support from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).The majority of quantitative studies on the consequences of internal migration focus almost exclusively on the labour-market outcomes and the material well-being of migrants. We investigate whether individuals who migrate within the UK become happier after the move than they were before, and whether the effect is permanent or transient. Using life-satisfaction responses from twelve waves of the British Household Panel Survey and employing a fixed-effects model, we derive a temporal pattern of migrants’ subjective well-being around the time of the migration event. Our findings make an original contribution by revealing that, on average, migration is preceded by a period when individuals experience a significant decline in happiness for a variety of reasons, including changes in personal living arrangements. Migration itself causes a boost in happiness, and brings people back to their initial levels. The research contributes, therefore, to advancing an understanding of migration in relation to set-point theory. Perhaps surprisingly, long-distance migrants are at least as happy as short-distance migrants despite the higher social and psychological costs involved. The findings of this paper add to the pressure to retheorize migration within a conceptual framework that accounts for social well-being from a life-course perspective.PostprintPeer reviewe

Interactions Between Local and Migrant Workers at the Workplace

In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in order to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and thereby increase their interaction and production activities. We consider the effect of the relative size (in the firm) of each group and the cost of activities on the migrants' assimilation process