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Migration Processes, Familial Characteristics, and Schooling Dropout Among Black Youths

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Demography

Abstract

This study uses data from the 2000 U.S. census to examine whether the schooling advantage of black immigrants’ children found in previous studies is robust. According to the results, the advantage associated with having migrant parents is not restricted to the children of immigrants. Black migrant parents, regardless of foreign-born status, have children with favorable schooling outcomes. Such parental-level influences, however, seem stronger among some immigrant groups than among native internal migrants. The study also suggests that the collective advantage of the children of immigrants is driven by positive migrant selectivity. Accordingly, comparisons between the children of native migrants and children in various immigrant groups reveal that the immigrant advantage is not robust. In fact, the results suggest that when immigrant ethnicity is considered, some children of immigrants may be disadvantaged relative to the children of native migrants. Among recent migrants, the children of native internal migrants also have more favorable outcomes than the children of immigrants, although these differences disappear after background factors are controlled. Further, internal-migrant and immigrant households are less likely to have characteristics that adversely affect schooling than nonmigrant households. Unsurprisingly, the children of nonmigrants have the worst outcomes among black youths.

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Notes

  1. Because familial relationships between children and their household heads sometimes vary, robustness tests are later conducted to examine the sensitivity of these observed schooling dropout patterns in migrant families to possible differences between biological and nonbiological children.

  2. Children in U.S.-born black families who had returned to the United States from abroad (0.5% of all children) were dropped from the analysis partly because of concerns that their parents may have been U.S. military personnel. Their inclusion in the sample may complicate the analysis further because the types of selectivity processes involved in their parental-migration processes are generally unclear.

  3. Critical information on parental internal-migration status is also unavailable for these children, making their inclusion in the analysis potentially problematic.

  4. Using older children in this analysis would bias estimates of the impacts of familial characteristics on schooling because these children are less likely to live with their parents than all children who are teenagers. According to the census data, within black households, individuals between ages 20 and 25, for example, are more than 30% less likely to be the children of household heads than those between ages 13 and 19.

  5. Given the fact that relationship codes found in the census are restricted to each person’s relationship with the household head, the analysis uses a broad definition of siblings: all children living within the same household. Within this group, nonbiological siblings are defined as children who are not identified as the biological children of the household head.

  6. This is illustrated by the following example: in two-parent families that have one dropout parent and another who graduated from college, the higher parental schooling level is still college degree, although the child will still be classified as having one dropout parent.

  7. A bivariate regression model controlling only for the oldest sibling’s dropout status indicated that the likelihood schooling dropout is indeed higher if oldest siblings also dropped out of school. As Model 3 shows, the direction of this relationship is reversed after other factors are controlled.

  8. The variable “Both parents dropped out of school” is coded 1 if both parents dropped out of school and coded 0 if not. Because positive outcomes for this measure will be found in only two-parent households, Models 3 and 4 adjust for differences in family structure by simultaneously including a control for whether children live in single-parent households (i.e., single-parent household is equal to 1) or in two-parent households (i.e., single-parent household is equal to 0).

  9. Model 3 includes all the additional familial-level controls found in Table 2, Model 3.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16801, USA

    Kevin J. A. Thomas

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Thomas, K.J.A. Migration Processes, Familial Characteristics, and Schooling Dropout Among Black Youths. Demography 49, 477–498 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0091-2

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