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Number of siblings and educational choices of immigrant children: evidence from first- and second-generation immigrants

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Abstract

We document the educational integration of immigrant children in France and Germany with a focus on the link between family size and educational decisions and distinguishing particularly between first- and second-generation immigrants and between source country groups. First, for immigrant adolescents, we show family-size adjusted convergence to almost native levels of higher education track attendance from the first to the second generation of immigrants. Second, we find that reduced fertility is associated with higher educational outcomes for immigrant children, possibly through a quantity–quality trade-off. Third, we show that between one-third and the complete difference in family-size adjusted educational outcomes between immigrants from different source countries or immigrant generations can be explained by parental background. This latter holds true for various immigrant groups in both France and Germany, two major European economies with distinct immigration histories.

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Notes

  1. The French Labour Force Survey is conducted quarterly by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and contains around 108,000 respondents aged at least 15 years in each year (INSEE 2010).

  2. The Scientific Use File of the annual German Microcensus contains about 480,000 observations per year.

  3. The SOEP is a longitudinal study of private households in Germany and currently contains nearly 12,000 households per year (Wagner et al. 2007).

  4. For a further description of the German school tracking system, see, for example, Mühlenweg and Puhani (2010).

  5. Since we exclude expatriates from the former French territories overseas, first-generation immigrants to France are defined as foreign-borns who had no French citizenship at birth.

  6. For numbers of observations by immigrant generation and source country group see Table A2; for the sample means see Table A3 of supplementary material in the Appendix.

  7. Probit models yield similar results.

  8. Non-linear decomposition results according to Yun (2004) yield similar results.

  9. To keep notation simple, the vector X includes the number of siblings as a regressor in Eqs. (1), (2) and (4), but excludes it in Eq. (3), where we single out the variable “number of siblings” to illustrate our simulation.

  10. See Table A5 of supplementary material in the Appendix for the full regression results.

  11. To distinguish the causal quantity–quality trade-off from the regression-adjusted estimates meant to proxy this trade-off, we use the term “quantity–quality locus”.

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Acknowledgments

This project was partly supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under the joint project “Integration of First and Second Generation Immigrants in France and Germany”. We thank the editor and anonymous referees and seminar participants at the German Economic Association (“Verein für Socialpolitik”) and at “Niedersächsischer Workshop in Applied Economics” for helpful comments. All remaining errors are our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EconomiX, Université Paris Ouest, 200, Avenue de la République, 92001, Nanterre Cedex, France

    Dominique Meurs

  2. INED, 133, bd Davout, 75020, Paris, France

    Dominique Meurs

  3. Institut für Arbeitsökonomik, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Patrick A. Puhani & Friederike Von Haaren-Giebel

  4. CReAM, University College London, London, UK

    Patrick A. Puhani

  5. SEW, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Patrick A. Puhani

  6. IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Patrick A. Puhani

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  1. Dominique Meurs
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  2. Patrick A. Puhani
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Correspondence to Patrick A. Puhani.

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Meurs, D., Puhani, P.A. & Von Haaren-Giebel, F. Number of siblings and educational choices of immigrant children: evidence from first- and second-generation immigrants. Rev Econ Household 15, 1137–1158 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-015-9320-y

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