Age at arrival, parents and neighborhoods: understanding the educational attainment of immigrants’ children

This article documents how children of immigrants cope in early adulthood in Finland. We first show that, on average, they have dramatically lower educational attainment than children of natives do. This difference can be attributed to age at arrival, parental income and neighborhood quality. In fact, Finnish-born children of immigrants obtain more education than children of natives growing up in the same zip codes and in families with similar parental income and family structure. Sibling comparisons suggest that age at arrival has a causal impact on educational attainment. The results are very similar for the likelihood of being idle and having been convicted of a crime, but are starkly different for the likelihood of having been reimbursed for psychotropic medication.