Peers, neighborhoods and immigrant student achievement: evidence from a placement policy

Arbeitspapier

Immigrants typically perform worse than other students in the OECD countries. We examine to what extent this is due to the population characteristics of the neighborhoods that immigrants grow up in. We address this issue using a governmental refugee placement policy which provides exogenous variation in the initial place of residence in Sweden. The main result is that, for a given share of immigrants in a neighborhood, immigrant school performance is increasing in the number of highly educated adults sharing the subject's ethnicity. A standard deviation increase in the fraction of highly educated adults in the assigned neighborhood increases compulsory school GPA by 0.9 percentile ranks. This magnitude corresponds to a tenth of the gap in student performance between refugee immigrant and native-born children. We also provide tentative evidence that the overall share of immigrants in the neighborhood has a negative effect on GPA.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 4521

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Education and Research Institutions: General ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
• Subject: Peer effects ; ethnic enclaves ; immigration ; school performance ; Migranten ; Bildungsniveau ; Nachbarschaftsökonomie ; Ethnische Gruppe ; Schweden

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Åslund, Olof ; Edin, Per-Anders ; Fredriksson, Peter ; Grönqvist, Hans
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/35925
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET