Working Paper: NBER ID: w28596
Authors: David N. Figlio; Paola Giuliano; Riccardo Marchingiglio; Umut Zek; Paola Sapienza
Abstract: We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. We propose a new identification strategy to partial out the unobserved non-random selection into schools, and find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of US-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not affect negatively the performance of affluent US-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. We provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.
Keywords: immigration; educational outcomes; US-born students; school selection
JEL Codes: I21; I24; J15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Immigrant presence (F22) | Academic achievement of US-born students (I24) |
| Cumulative exposure to foreign-born students (F22) | Academic achievement of US-born students (I24) |
| Presence of immigrant students (F22) | Academic achievement of disadvantaged US-born students (I24) |
| Higher expected academic performance among immigrant students (I24) | Better scores for US-born students (I24) |