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The Quality of Immigrant Source Country Educational Outcomes: Do they Matter in the Receiving Country?

Author Info

  • Qing Li

    ()

    (McMaster University)

  • Arthur Sweetman

    ()

    (McMaster University)

Abstract

International test scores are used to proxy the quality of source country educational outcomes and explain differences in the rate of return to schooling among immigrants in Canada. The average quality of educational outcomes in an immigrant’s source country and the rate of return to schooling in the host country labour market are found to have a strong and positive association. However, in contrast to those who completed their education pre-immigration, immigrants who arrived at a young age are not influenced by this educational quality measure. Also, the results are not much affected when the source country’s GDP per capita and other nation-level characteristics are used as control variables. Together, these observations reinforce the argument that the quality of educational outcomes has explanatory power for labour market outcomes. The effects are strongest for males and for females without children.

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Paper provided by Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London in its series CReAM Discussion Paper Series with number 1332.

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Date of creation: Dec 2013
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Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:1332
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Keywords: Immigration; Quality of Education; Earnings;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
  • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

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Cited by:

  1. repec:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2014-47 is not listed on IDEAS
  2. Yigit Aydede & Atul Dar, 2016. "The cost of immigrants’ occupational mismatch and the effectiveness of postarrival policies in Canada," IZA Journal of Migration, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-23, December.
  3. Armando J. Garcia Pires, 2015. "Brain Drain And Brain Waste," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 40(1), pages 1-34, March.
  4. repec:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2014-51 is not listed on IDEAS

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