Immigration and the School System

• Authors: Esther Hauk.
• BSE Working Paper: 590 | September 15
• Keywords: education , immigration , school resources , parental involvement , immigrant sorting
• JEL codes: I20, I21, I28, J24, J61
• education
• immigration
• school resources
• parental involvement
• immigrant sorting

Immigration is an important problem in many societies, and it has wide-ranging effects on the educational systems of host countries. There is a now a large empirical literature, but very little theoretical work on this topic. We introduce a model of family immigration in a frame- work where school quality and student outcomes are determined endogenously. This allows us to explain the selection of immigrants in terms of parental motivation and the policies which favor a positive selection. Also, we can study the effect of immigration on the school system and how school quality may self-reinforce immigrants’ and natives’ choices.