Abstract Children with an immigrant background have generally poorer school outcomes than nonimmigrant children. Immigrant generation and age at migration play a significant role in shaping these outcomes. To capture the complexity of this population’s experiences, we define immigrant background as a compound variable including immigrant generation, age at migration, and exogamous family setting (i.e. children born to one immigrant and one nonimmigrant parent). We study the relationship between immigrant background and completion of secondary education by ages 21–23. Using Finnish register data, we find that, overall, individuals with an immigrant background are more likely than nonimmigrants to have completed only basic education by these ages regardless of sex. First-generation immigrants, particularly those who migrated at older ages, have the lowest likelihood of completing secondary education. However, second-generation immigrants and those with an exogamous family background are more likely than nonimmigrants to graduate from the academic track, irrespective of sex, with stronger associations among women. Across all generations, women are more likely than men to continue into the academic track of upper secondary education, a pattern consistent among both nonimmigrant and immigrant individuals, and across income levels. These findings highlight the importance of considering refined measures of immigrant background, such as the one proposed in this study, that simultaneously account for immigrant generation, age at migration of the first generation, and exogamous family settings in order to better capture the growing complexity of immigrant experiences and their relationship to educational outcomes.
Loi et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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