The solution of the immigrant paradox: aspirations and expectations of children of migrants

In this online seminar, the speaker provides an answer to the immigrant paradox (recent immigrants outperforming earlier and second-generation immigrants) by examining the educational outcomes of young adults and focusing on the differences in expectations as a driving factor. A Q&A session will follow.

The paper abstract can be found below

In this paper, we push forward the hypothesis that misalignment between expectations and aspirations crucially affects the educational outcomes of young adults. Using AddHealth, a dataset of 20,774 adolescents between the grades 7-12, we show that the difference in school performance between migrant children and natives lies within the aspirations and expectations that migrant children form. More specifically, we find that positive misalignment between aspirations and expectations is a driving force for higher effort and better education outcomes of immigrant teenagers in the USA. This force resolves the well-known immigrant paradox. Furthermore, this result is specific to migrant children and does not hold for second-generation migrant pupils.