The Children of Immigrants at School: A Comparative Look at Integration in the United States and Western Europe

4. Second-Generation Attainment and Inequality: Primary and Secondary Effects on Educational Outcomes in Britain and the United States

120 chapter four Second-Generation Attainment and Inequality: Primary and Secondary Effects on Educational Outcomes in Britain and the United States Mary C. Waters, Anthony Heath, Van C. Tran, and Vikki Boliver The children of immigrants whose parents have low levels of education face a daunting task. In a time of growing inequality, postsecondary education holds the key not only to a better job, but to a host of other desirable outcomes , including better health, a more stable family life, and better overall happiness (Hout 2012). Yet children whose parents do not have a postsecondary education are at a disadvantage in accessing higher education. An immigrant background adds a host of other impediments, including the learning of a new language, the possibility that some students began their educations in a different educational system, as well as the possibility of ethnic and racial discrimination in local schools and neighborhoods. To what extent are children of immigrants able to overcome these barriers and achieve a postsecondary education? To what extent does their academic ability get recognized by different educational systems? Do children of immigrants make the transition to higher education at lower or higher levels than children of natives? And if we can control for prior academic achievement, are we able to find evidence of a second-generation penalty or advantage over the natives? In this chapter we examine these questions by assessing the educational careers of young people in the United States and England at four points— performance scores at age sixteen, completion of secondary education, completion of tertiary education, and the type of university attended among those who go to university. Using these four data points we can compare the fortunes of the children of immigrants in both countries on two theoretically important but different aspects of schooling—the primary and secondary Second-Generation Attainment and Inequality 121 effects of social background on educational attainment. The primary effects of social background are usually conceptualized to include the effects of the home environment, particularly parental help and encouragement, that contribute to success on attainment tests during the period of compulsory schooling. So our first question will be whether there are differences between immigrant and native children in test scores at ages of fifteen and sixteen, and whether those differences persist when we control for parental education. The secondary effects of social background on attainment are those that determine whether, among children of equal attainment, some are able to continue or not. Here it has been customary to think of the decisions that young people and their families make. The key decision in both Britain and the United States, in both of which schooling is compulsory until age sixteen , is whether to drop out or to continue at that point. A second key decision is whether to attend university or some other postsecondary school. A third decision is which university or college to attend. In both England and the United States, students have many universities to choose from and these vary a great deal by selectivity and social prestige. When we examine these secondary effects, we will ask whether children of immigrants compared to children of natives who share the same educational achievement as measured by test scores vary in the decisions they make at these crucial points in their educational careers. We do this in each country by comparing the children of immigrants to the third- and later-generation children of native whites, while controlling for social class of parents. The theory of effectively maintained inequality (described in the introduction to this volume) posits that as more young people attend university, the variation in outcomes among students will shift toward qualitative distinctions among the types of universities attended and away from merely the quantitative amount of education each student achieves. Using novel sources of data from both the United States and Britain, we are able to examine this question. We analyze below whether the ethnic origins of children of immigrants and natives affect the prestige of the university they attend. We use panel data in the United Kingdom and longitudinal data in the United States that allow us to examine these outcomes while controlling for the social class and migration background of parents. These data sources are the Youth Cohort Survey in Britain and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in the United States. At the tertiary level 122 Mary C. Waters, Anthony Heath, Van C...