TY  - JOUR
AU  - Betts, Julian R
AU  - Lofstrom, Magnus
TI  - The Educational Attainment of Immigrants:  Trends and Implications
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6757
PY  - 1998
Y2  - October 1998
DO  - 10.3386/w6757
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6757
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6757.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Julian Betts
Department of Economics, 0508
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0508
Tel: 858/534-3369
Fax: 858/534-7040
E-Mail: jbetts@ucsd.edu

Magnus Lofstrom
Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)
500 Washington Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94111
E-Mail: lofstrom@ppic.org
M1  - published as Julian R. Betts, Magnus Lofstrom. "The Educational Attainment of Immigrants: Trends and Implications," in George J. Borjas, editor, "Issues in the Economics of Immigration" University of Chicago Press (2000)

AB  - This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. Censuses to study trends in educational attainment of immigrants relative to natives.  Immigrants have become relatively less highly educated, but have become more highly educated in an absolute sense.  The effects of changes in relative educational attainment between immigrants and natives on earnings are studied.  Educational differences are found to explain more than half the observed wage gap between the two groups. The paper also allows for non-linearities in returns to education. Sheepskin effects influence earnings in different ways for natives and immigrants.  Differences in returns to pre- and post-migration education also appear.  The paper also finds evidence that immigrants crowd natives out of education, although the effects are stronger in secondary than in postsecondary education.
ER  -