Does Acculturation Lower Educational Achievement for Children of Immigrants?

Emily Greenman

Several studies have documented declines in educational outcomes, such as high school graduation, across immigrant generations. Such findings have often been attributed to the negative effects of acculturation on immigrant children’s attitudes and behaviors toward education. Very little research, however, has directly examined whether attitudes and behaviors toward education do in fact change across generations. Nor has there been a study that has tried to explicitly link immigrants’ educational attitudes to either acculturation or educational outcomes. This project uses data from Add Health, a nationally representative survey of adolescents, to examine educational attitudes and behaviors as possible mechanisms linking acculturation to educational outcomes. First, it assesses whether there is a pattern of generational change in educational attitudes and behaviors. Second, it assesses to what extent generational differences in high school graduation, college enrollment, and grades are attributable to generational differences in attitudes and behaviors. Third, it tests whether generational changes in immigrant children’s attitudes depend on the school peer context in which they acculturate. By providing a deeper understanding of the relationship between acculturation and educational outcomes, this project will help educators design more effective interventions to help children of immigrants succeed in school.

About Emily Greenman

Emily Greenman received her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Carleton College in 1998. She worked in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute for three years prior to enrolling in graduate school. She completed her PhD in Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan in 2007. Her dissertation, entitled “Intersecting Inequalities: Four Essays on Race, Immigration, and Gender in the Contemporary United States,” won a prestigious 2007 Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Michigan. Since 2007 Greenman has been an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and a faculty associate of the Population Research Institute at Penn State University. Her research interests are wide-ranging, but encompass two primary areas: Children in immigrant families and gender inequality at home and in the workplace. Other interests include social stratification and health inequalities. Her published work includes “Is Assimilation Theory Dead? The Effect of Assimilation on Adolescent Well-Being,” a comprehensive empirical assessment of the relationship between assimilation and educational outcomes, psychological well-being, and risk behavior among adolescents in immigrant families. Ongoing research topics include immigrant-native earnings differences in the low-skill labor force, racial differences in the effect of family responsibilities on women’s earnings, community influences on parenting practices, and the effect of social context on educational attitudes and behaviors among children of immigrants.