TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gould,Eric D.
AU  - Lavy,Victor
AU  - Paserman,M. Daniele
TI  - Does Immigration Affect the Long-Term Educational Outcomes of Natives?  Quasi-Experimental Evidence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10844
PY  - 2004
Y2  - October 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10844
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10844.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric Gould
Dept. of Economics
Hebrew University
Mt. Scopus
Jerusalem 91905 ISRAEL
E-Mail: mseric@mscc.huji.ac.il

Victor Lavy
Department of Economics
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus
Jerusalem 91905
ISRAEL
Tel: 972-2-5883245
E-Mail: msvictor@mscc.huji.ac.il

Daniele Paserman
Department of Economics
Boston University
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 1-617-3535695
Fax: 1-617-3534449
E-Mail: paserman@bu.edu
AB  - This paper uses the mass migration wave to Israel in the 1990s to examine the impact of immigrant concentration in elementary school on the long-term academic outcomes of native students in high school. To identify the causal effect of immigrant children on their peers, we exploit random variation in the number of immigrants across grades within the same school. The results suggest that the overall presence of immigrants had essentially no effect on the quality of the high school attended by native Israelis and on dropout rates, and at most a mild negative effect on high school matriculation rates. However, when we break up the sample by parents' education and by ethnic origin, we find that disadvantaged children were more likely to have been adversely affected by a higher immigrant concentration in elementary school. Focusing on the impact of Ethiopian immigrants who are from a much lower socio-economic background, we find stronger evidence of adverse effects, especially for disadvantaged students and in classes where immigrant concentration was particularly high.
ER  -