IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucl/cepeow/21-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Refugees and the Educational Attainment of Natives

Author

Listed:
  • Colin Green

    (Deparmtent of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

  • Jon Marius Vaag Iversen

    (NTNU Social Research, Centre for Economic Research)

Abstract

Increases in immigration raise a range of challenges for schools. Existing research primarily investigates the impact of immigrants on native test scores and demonstrates mixed results. Using Norwegian register data and narrow within-school, within-family comparisons, we demonstrate negative effects of refugees on native math performance, and no effect on English or Norwegian performance. The negative effects on mathematics are not present for other, non-refugee economic immigrants, and are concentrated amongst refugee children who themselves face the greatest educational difficulties. Our results suggest a need for targeted policy aimed at helping immigrant children most likely to face educational difficulties, and generate negative spillover effects. They also suggest caution in generalising results generated by specific immigrant, or even refugee, groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin Green & Jon Marius Vaag Iversen, 2021. "Refugees and the Educational Attainment of Natives," CEPEO Working Paper Series 21-07, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised Jun 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:21-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp21-07.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2021
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brunello, Giorgio & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2013. "The effect of immigration on the school performance of natives: Cross country evidence using PISA test scores," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 234-246.
    2. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2011. "Too Young to Leave the Nest? The Effects of School Starting Age," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 455-467, May.
    3. Torberg Falch & Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør & Bjarne Strøm, 2017. "Do Smaller Classes Always Improve Students’ Long-run Outcomes?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(5), pages 654-688, October.
    4. Rosario Maria Ballatore & Margherita Fort & Andrea Ichino, 2018. "Tower of Babel in the Classroom: Immigrants and Natives in Italian Schools," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(4), pages 885-921.
    5. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2005. "The More the Merrier? The Effect of Family Size and Birth Order on Children's Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 669-700.
    6. Timothy M. Diette & Ruth Uwaifo Oyelere, 2014. "Gender and Race Heterogeneity: The Impact of Students with Limited English on Native Students' Performance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 412-417, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    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).
    2. Morales, Camila, 2022. "Do refugee students affect the academic achievement of peers? Evidence from a large urban school district," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    3. Akira Shimada, 2021. "Does The Host Country Experience The Brain Drain Or The Brain Gain By Accepting Study Migrants?," Economy & Business Journal, International Scientific Publications, Bulgaria, vol. 15(1), pages 260-277.
    4. 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).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Green, Colin & Iversen, Jon Marius Vaag, 2022. "Refugees and the educational attainment of natives: Evidence from Norway," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    2. Julia Bredtmann & Sebastian Otten & Christina Vonnahme, 2021. "Linguistic diversity in the classroom, student achievement, and social integration," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 121-142, March.
    3. Anelli, Massimo & Shih, Kevin Y. & Williams, Kevin, 2017. "Foreign Peer Effects and STEM Major Choice," IZA Discussion Papers 10743, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2014. "Family, Community and Long-Term Earnings Inequality," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def017, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    5. Morales, Camila, 2022. "Do refugee students affect the academic achievement of peers? Evidence from a large urban school district," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    6. Björn NILSSON, 2019. "Education and migration: insights for policymakers," Working Paper 23ca9c54-061a-4d60-967c-f, Agence française de développement.
    7. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2013. "Under Pressure? The Effect of Peers on Outcomes of Young Adults," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 119-153.
    8. Frattini, Tommaso & Meschi, Elena, 2019. "The effect of immigrant peers in vocational schools," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-22.
    9. A. Di Liberto, 2013. "Length of stay in the host country and educational achievement of immigrant students: the Italian case," Working Paper CRENoS 201316, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    10. Chevalier, Arnaud & Isphording, Ingo E. & Lisauskaite, Elena, 2020. "Peer diversity, college performance and educational choices," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    11. Thomas Ahn & Christopher Jepsen, 2015. "The effect of sharing a mother tongue with peers: evidence from North Carolina middle schools," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-21, December.
    12. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    13. Martin Schlotter, 2012. "Educational Production in Preschools and Schools - Microeconometric Evidence from Germany," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 41.
    14. Daniel Borbely & Markus Gehrsitz & Stuart McIntyre & Gennaro Rossi & Graeme Roy, 2023. "Early Years Multi‐grade Classes and Pupil Attainment," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 85(6), pages 1295-1319, December.
    15. Maximilian Bach & Stephan Sievert, 2019. "Birth Cohort Size Variation and the Estimation of Class Size Effects," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1817, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Pregaldini, Damiano & Balestra, Simone & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2022. "Does Ethnic Diversity in Schools Affect Occupational Choices?," IZA Discussion Papers 15780, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Wang, Haining & Cheng, Zhiming & Smyth, Russell, 2018. "Do migrant students affect local students’ academic achievements in urban China?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 64-77.
    18. Datta Gupta, Nabanita & Simonsen, Marianne, 2016. "Academic performance and type of early childhood care," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 217-229.
    19. Nakamura, Nobuyuki & Suzuki, Aya, 2023. "Impact of foreign domestic workers on the fertility decision of households: evidence from Hong Kong," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(1), pages 105-135, March.
    20. Peter Jensen, 2021. "Immigrants in the classroom and effects on native children," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 194-194, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Refugees; Educational Attainment.;

    JEL classification:

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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:21-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jake Anders (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.