How do children of immigrants perform? Evidence from Australian nationwide standardized tests
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Author | Asadul Islam,Dipanwita Sarkar,Russell Smyth |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12914 |
International Migration. 2022;60:93–136.
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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
INTRODUCTION
Debates about i mmigration continue to rema in at the fore in traditiona l host countries, such as Aus tralia, Canada
and the USA. In r ecent times, such deb ate has been extended to i nclude examination of t he educational outco mes
Received: 7 Novem ber 2019
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Revised: 9 June 2021
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Accepted: 4 Augus t 2021
DOI: 10.1111/imig.12914
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
How do children of immigrants perform? Evidence
from Australian nationwide standardized tests
Asadul Islam1| Dipanwita Sarkar2| Russell Smyth3
© 2021 The Author s. Internationa l Migration © 2021 IOM
1Centre for Devel opment Economic s and
Sustainab ility (CDES), and D epartment
of Economics, M onash Business Sc hool,
Monash University, Caulfield, Vic., Australia
2School of Econo mics and Finance,
Queenslan d University of Technol ogy,
Brisbane, Qld , Australia
3Departm ent of Economics, Mon ash
Business Sch ool, Monash Univer sity,
Caulfield, Vic., Australia
Correspondence
Dipanwita S arkar, School of Economi cs
and Finance, Que ensland Universit y of
Technology, Brisba ne, Qld, Australia.
Email: dipanwita.sarkar@qut.edu.au
Abstract
We examine the educational achievement of children of
immigrants and native- born parents in Aus tralia, using na-
tionally representati ve panel data from the Longitudinal
Study of Austr alian Children linked to natio nwide stand-
ardized examinations. The findings indicate that children
of immigrants perform significa ntly b etter than c hildren
of native- born Australians in five subjec ts and three grade
levels. While this reflects Aus tralia's shift towards skill-
based immigrati on policy, such a striking dif ference in per-
formance based on the parents’ countr y of origin and/or
linguistic background suggests a ro le for cultural capital.
Further, children of Asian immigrant parents outperform
children of parents from oth er countries of origin. Children
with immigrant parents from non- English- speaking back-
grounds outpe rform children of both English- speaking
immigrants and native- born Australians. Using matching
techniques, we compare children from similar backgrounds
of native- born and immigr ant parents. The re sults suggest
that unobservables such as differences in motivation could
be driving the comparatively higher achievements of chil-
dren of immigrants .
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ISLA M etAL.
of the children of immigrants. Children of immigr ants form a growing share of the child population in these tradi-
tional immigrant- receiving countries, representing one third of all children in Australia, 28% of children in Canada
and 22% of children in the USA (Washbrook e t al., 2012). An examination of the e ducational att ainment of i m-
migrant chil dren is importan t, not only beca use it is an indic ator of future labou r market outcomes fo r a sizeable
share of the nex t generation in these cou ntries, but also beca use it is an important m arker of the extent to which
children of immigrants will be successful in integrating into host societies (De Paola & B runello, 2016; Sch nell &
Azzolini, 2015).
A sizeable literature compares the educational attainment of children of migrants with that of children of the
native- born (Boyd, 2002; Du stmann et al., 2012; Thomas, 2009; Warman & Wors wick, 2016; Worswick , 2004).1.
Evidence from these studies is mixed. It tends to suggest that the children of immigrants per form much worse than
children of the nat ive- born in terms of educationa l performan ce in contin ental Europe (Dustmann et al., 2012;
Sweetman & Van Ours , 2015). In particular, t he children of immigrants have a large educat ional disadvanta ge in
southern Europe (Schnell & Azzolini, 2015). However, the children of immigrants in Israel, the United Kingdo m and
North Amer ica perform as well as, or even outpe rform, children of the native - born (Sweetman & Van Our s, 2015;
Warman & Worswick, 2016).
The main reason fo r differences bet ween immigrant an d native communities in a ny host country has to d o with
differences in the natu re of the sending and receiving of the country's culture, lan guage and level of development,
which will natur ally predict how eas y it is for immigrant childr en to assimilate, and also, t o some extent, how well
they are l ikely to perfor m in school, re lative to children with native- born paren ts. The reason s why different re-
sults have been fo und in different studie s is mostly, if not exclusively, to do with cul tural, linguistic and e conomic
differences b etween the sending an d receiving countries (refe r to Abramitzky & Bous tan, 2017, for a review).
In this p aper, we examine the educational achievement of children of immigrants and the n ative- born in
Australia. We use nationally representative panel data on the background of the children of immigrants and the
native- born, an d link the se data t o student performance in nationwide standardized examinations. Specifically,
we use data on the soc io- economic s tatus of children and their p arents from the Longitu dinal Study of Australian
Children (LSAC). The LSAC is linked with test scores from the N ational A ssessment Program – Literacy and
Numeracy (NAPLAN), administered to all Australian stu dents in Grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 on t he same day each year.
It has been conducted an nually since 2008 and evaluates stu dent performance in reading, wr iting, language con-
ventions (spellin g, grammar and punctu ation) and numeracy. An adva ntage of NAPLAN is that asse ssment scales,
which demons trate how student s have performed compared to esta blished standard s, “allow achievement to be
mapped as student s progress through sch ooling”.2. As such, our sample is a large representation of childre n in
Australia, surveyed over multiple years, and includes linkages to s tandardized test s. Moreover, in t he LSAC, th e
child's moth er is also surveyed , allowing us to repor t results based o n parental charac teristics, su ch as the educa-
tional attai nment, occupation and t he year of arrival in Austra lia by the immigrant parent (s).
Australia r epresents an intere sting case in whic h to situate such a st udy, as well as an oppor tunity to explor e
the role of t he human capital characteristics , together with the cultural and langu age background, of immigrants
for several reasons. The first is the size of Aust ralia's immigrant population due to its long history as a major host
country for immigrants. Based on the most recent population census (2016), Australia has a higher proportion of
people born overseas (26%) than Canad a (22%), the USA (14%) and the United Kin gdom (13%) (ABS, 2017). Those
born overseas plus tho se born in Australia, but with at least one paren t born overseas, represented almo st 50% of
the populatio n in the 2016 Census (ABS, 2017).
A second rea son arises from Aus tralia's geographic al proximity to Asi a and thus its rel atively high propor tion
of Asian immigran ts. In particular, immigrat ion from Asia has become incre asingly important in rec ent decades. In
the 2016 Census, China, India, the Philippin es, Viet Nam and Malaysia accounted for more foreign- born Australian
residents th an England, New Zealand an d mainland Europe (ABS, 2017). To this point , most studies of the ed uca-
tional outcome s of the children of Asia n immigrants have been f ocused on the USA (Lee & Z hou, 2016, 2017; Li u
& Xie, 2016). Using Austral ian data pr esents an opportunity to explore heterogeneity in performa nce between
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PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS AND NATIVES
children of Asian immigr ant parents a nd children of parents of Eu ropean descent, relative to c hildren of native -
born Austra lians, with a larger sampl e than that employed in compar able US studies.
A third factor that makes Australia an intere sting case from an international perspec tive is the relatively recent
introducti on of a skill- base d immigration system, which results in positi vely selected immigr ants. In the USA, and
much of Europe, inwar d immigration has been dominated by low- skilled migrants who are not proficient in the
host language an d who are often undocumented . Canada, on the other hand, an d more recently Australia, h ave
used a points scheme th at focuses on admitting higher ski lled migrants who have higher human ca pital and better
English proficien cy. As a result, the proportion of immigr ants entering Australia as refu gees has declined in favour
of more high- skilled entrant s (Hawthorne, 2011). Th ere was a fivefold increase in the annual sk illed worker intake
between 1995 and 2016 (Phillips & Simon- Davies, 2017). This outcome was rea lized through increased quota s for
skilled visas and a point s system that heavily weights human cap ital attributes and employer sp onsorship (Wright,
2015). In 2015 and 2016, skill ed migration represente d just over two- th irds of Australia's migratio n intake.
That Australia h as had a select ive migration policy since th e early 1990s, and that its intake of sk illed mi-
grants has progre ssively incre ased since the mid- 1990s, logi cally lends weight to two predictions that we test
in the pa per. The first is that, unlike t he USA and muc h of Europe in which there is a much higher p roportion of
low- sk illed migration, the children of i mmigrant parents will perform we ll, relative to th e children of nati ve- born
Australians . The second is that t he children of immigr ants in later cohor ts in which there w as a heavier emphasis
on skilled migr ation will perform bet ter at school than earlie r generations of immigrant c hildren.
There are ver y few related studies on educ ational attainment of im migrant children for Aust ralia. The closest
studies to our s in the lite rature are Cobb- Clark and Nguyen (2012) and Washbrook et al. (2012). Washbrook
et al. (2012) compare the performance of four- and five- year- old children of immigrants in Australia, Canada, the
United K ingdom and the USA. Cobb- Cla rk and Ngu yen (2012) focu s on the intergenerationa l link bet ween the
educational at tainment of immigrants and thei r children. We differ from both studies in that we employ nati onally
representat ive panel data for the childre n of immigrants who live in Australia and c hildren of the native- born at
different age s and link these data to stud ent performance in nat ionwide standardized ex aminations.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESES
Drawing on human capital theory (Becker,1964), in this section we develop four hypotheses that we test below.
Our first hypothesis is that c hildren of immigrant s will perform b etter educational ly than children of native- born
parents. This hypot hesis rests on tw o propositions . The f irst is that the human cap ital of immigrant par ents is
higher t han their nat ive counterpar ts. The se cond is that there will be intergener ational transmi ssion of human
capital from p arents to their childre n.
With respect to the first proposition , studies in continental Europe explain the educ ational ga p in favour
of chil dren of the native- born over children of immigrants by immigr ant parents’ lower ave rage human capital
endowment (Schuller, 2015). However, Australia has sele ctive migration bas ed on the points sc heme. We expect
that the points sys tem in Austr alia that has facilitated skill- based migration wi ll alter the relative human capital
endowment of migrants vis- à- vis natives.
The second propo sition rest s on the existe nce of a high intergenerational correlation between the ed uca-
tion of pa rents and thei r children, which has been docu mented in many s tudies (Card et al., 1998). For example,
Dustmann et al. (2012) fo und that the edu cational at tainment of migrant children a cross countri es is strongly
correlated with t he level of education of thei r parents.
Using Austr alian data, Cobb- Clark and Nguyen (2012) found t hat highly educate d migrant parents are better
able to motivate their chil dren to perform academic ally. The source of such motivation may stem from imm igrant
parents ser ving as good role models for their chi ldren (Thomas, 2009) or through greater awareness am ong chil-
dren of the sacrifices made by their parents i n order to provid e them with edu cational op portunities (Fuligni,
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