Center for Demography and Ecology University of Wisconsin-Madison Population Change and the Changing Educational Attainment of Ethnic Groups in the United States

This study assesses the effect of population change on decade changes in the educational attainment level of ethnic (ancestry) populations in the United States. Our data derive from decennial censuses, NLMS, World Bank and INS. We find that changes in the share of ethnic populations with one or more years of post secondary schooling are associated with selected components of population change during the 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 decades. The specific components include survivors during a decade, in-migration and emigration of the foreign-born. Likewise, intra-generational mobility is an important determinant of changes in educational attainment. The discussion addresses some limitations of the data and suggests directions for future research. Introduction Most of the research on educational attainment and changes therein focuses on the roles that cognitive ability, socioeconomic and family background, place-specific opportunity structures -such as those provided by neighborhood and school environments -and public policies play in shaping the educational experiences of individuals as they move through the life course (see Mare, 1995; Gamoran, 2001; Entwisle, et al, 2005). In contrast, the analysis presented in this paper focuses more broadly on macro processes of change in educational attainment. Specifically, we describe and seek to account for relative changes in the educational attainment of ethnic (country of origin) populations in the United States during the period 19802000. We seek to advance previous work by giving greater attention to the contribution of population change on changes in the educational distribution. We focus specifically on the potential role of Intraand intergenerational changes, and changes in the size of the foreign-born population on the changing educational attainment of the U.S. population.