Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students (WP-21-19)
David Figlio, Paola Giuliano, Riccardo Marchingiglio, Umut Özek, and Paola Sapienza
The researchers study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of U.S.-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of U.S.-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. The authors propose a new identification strategy to partial out the unobserved non-random selection into schools, and find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not affect negatively the performance of affluent U.S.-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. The researchers provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.