Working Paper: NBER ID: w24067
Authors: Brian Duncan; Jeffrey Grogger; Ana Sofia Leon; Stephen J. Trejo
Abstract: U.S.-born Mexican Americans suffer a large schooling deficit relative to other Americans, and standard data sources suggest that this deficit does not shrink between the 2nd and later generations. Standard data sources lack information on grandparents’ countries of birth, however, which creates potentially serious issues for tracking the progress of later-generation Mexican Americans. Exploiting unique NLSY97 data that address these measurement issues, we find substantial educational progress between the 2nd and 3rd generations for a recent cohort of Mexican Americans. Such progress is obscured when we instead mimic the limitations inherent in standard data sources.
Keywords: Mexican Americans; generational progress; educational attainment; ethnic attrition
JEL Codes: J61; J62
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| 2nd generation Mexican Americans (J79) | 3rd generation Mexican Americans (J79) |
| 3rd generation Mexican Americans (J79) | educational attainment (I21) |
| 4th generation Mexican Americans (J79) | educational stagnation (I21) |
| ethnic attrition (J15) | educational measures for 4th generation Mexican Americans (I24) |
| limitations of traditional data sources (C80) | misinterpretation of educational stagnation for 3rd generation Mexican Americans (I24) |