Results from international standardized tests show large cross-country differences in students' performances. Where do these gaps come from? This paper argues that differences in cultural environments and parental inputs may be of great importance. We show that the school performance of second-generation immigrants is similar to that of native students in their parents' countries of origin. This holds true even after accounting for different family background characteristics, schools attended and selection into immigration. We quantify the overall contribution of various parental inputs to the observed cross-country differences in PISA test performance and show that they account for between 12% and 30% of the total variation and for most of the gap between East Asia and other regions. This pattern calls into questions whether PISA scores should be interpreted only as a quality measure for a country's educational system, since they actually contain an important intergenerational and cultural component.

中文翻译：

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各国的父母，学校和人力资本差异

国际标准化考试的结果表明，跨国的学生成绩差异很大。这些差距从何而来？本文认为，文化环境和父母的投入方面的差异可能非常重要。我们表明，第二代移民的学校表现与父母原籍国的本地学生的表现相似。即使考虑到不同的家庭背景特征，学校就读和选择移民，这一点仍然成立。我们量化了各种父母的投入对PISA测试表现中观察到的跨国差异的总体贡献，并表明它们占总差异的12％至30％，并且弥补了东亚与其他地区之间的大部分差距。