Educational Achievements of the Third Generation

Aslan Zorlu , University of Amsterdam
Wouter van Gent, University of Amsterdam

An increasing number of grandchildren of post-WWII immigrants have completed their formal education and started participating in the labour market. In many cases, their already-aged grandparents were labour or post-colonial immigrants. They had little education, began at the lower end of the labour market, and made little socioeconomic progress. The second-generation immigrant families have compensated for some of the parental disadvantages but could not reach parity with their native counterparts. To what extent could young grandchildren of immigrants, the third generation, offset the socioeconomic disadvantages of their ancestors? This paper seeks to assess the progress of educational attainment of major migrant groups after three generations from an inter-generational mobility perspective using robust and comprehensive Dutch register data for young adults aged 18 to 30. The analyses confirm the existence of ethnic gaps but suggest that the educational attainment of the third generation from the most disadvantaged groups does not differ significantly from that of migrant groups that began with a more favourable position in the Netherlands.

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 Presented in Session 63. Immigrants' Descendants and Social Stratification