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Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students

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Listed:
  • David N. Figlio
  • Paola Giuliano
  • Riccardo Marchingiglio
  • Umut Özek
  • Paola Sapienza

Abstract

We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. We propose a new identification strategy to partial out the unobserved non-random selection into schools, and find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of US-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not affect negatively the performance of affluent US-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. We provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.

Suggested Citation

  • David N. Figlio & Paola Giuliano & Riccardo Marchingiglio & Umut Özek & Paola Sapienza, 2021. "Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students," NBER Working Papers 28596, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28596
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    Cited by:

    1. Assaad, Ragui & Ginn, Thomas & Saleh, Mohamed, 2023. "Refugees and the education of host populations: Evidence from the Syrian inflow to Jordan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
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    3. Çakır, Selcen & Erbay, Elif & Kirdar, Murat Güray, 2021. "Syrian Refugees and Human Capital Accumulation of Native Children in Turkey," IZA Discussion Papers 14972, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

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