Suet-ling Pong and Nancy Landale, Poulation Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University.
The goal of this research is to extend our knowledge of the academic achievement of children of immigrants by widening the lens through which their parents’ characteristics and experiences are examined. In the absence of information on immigrants' pre-migration characteristics, it is difficult—if not impossible—to understand the unique role of post-migration circumstances in the outcomes of immigrants and their children. In our featured study published in Child Development in 2012, using parent and child data from the New Immigrant Survey, we argue that families’ socioeconomic status before migrating contributes significantly to their socioeconomic status (SES) after migrating but in different ways. For example, immigrant parents’ education before migrating is significantly tied to their children’s achievement in the United States, but parents’ occupations before migration does not. Taken together, pre-migration parental attributes fully account for the test score disadvantage of Mexican-origin children of legal immigrants relative to non-Latino children of legal immigrants.
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