Educational attainment in the 1990's

Educational attainment in the 1990's

Immigrants who arrived in the 1990s are less likely than native-born residents to have graduated from or even attended high school or college. A substantial percentage have only an elementary school education or less . However, the college graduation rate for recent immigrants is, on average, 27 percent—still lower than the 31 percent rate for the native-born city residents, but significantly

higher than the 21 percent average rate for earlier (pre-1990) immigrants.

When college graduation rates are examined by country of origin, however, a more nuanced story emerges . Most notably, the college graduation ratesfor immigrants from Japan (62 percent); the Philippines (61 percent); Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan (46 percent); India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan (42 percent); and Korea (41 percent) are all substantially higher than the 31 percent

graduation rate for native-born city residents.

Immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, and China have the lowest college graduation rates as well as the lowest median earnings of the groups examined. Still,

there is not an exact correspondence between college graduation rates and median earnings. Immigrants from the Caribbean countries of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, and Guyana, for instance, have a college graduation rate of 10 percent and median earnings of $22,000, while immigrants from China have a 21 percent college graduation rate and median earnings of $15,000. This inconsistency may be due at least in part to varying degrees of English language fluency—only about a third of the immigrants from China report speaking English well or very well, while about threequarters of those from the Caribbean group fall into this category. In general, low levels of English language fluency are associated with low median earnings.

Sources: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2050-411X.2009.tb00415.x