We examine the educational achievement of children of immigrants and native-born parents in Australia, using nationally representative panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children linked to nationwide standardized examinations. The findings indicate that children of immigrants perform significantly better than children of native-born Australians in five subjects and three grade levels. While this reflects Australia's shift towards skill-based immigration policy, such a striking difference in performance based on the parents’ country of origin and/or linguistic background suggests a role for cultural capital. Further, children of Asian immigrant parents outperform children of parents from other countries of origin. Children with immigrant parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds outperform children of both English-speaking immigrants and native-born Australians. Using matching techniques, we compare children from similar backgrounds of native-born and immigrant parents. The results suggest that unobservables such as differences in motivation could be driving the comparatively higher achievements of children of immigrants.

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移民子女的表现如何？来自澳大利亚全国标准化考试的证据

我们使用与全国标准化考试相关的澳大利亚儿童纵向研究中具有全国代表性的面板数据来检查澳大利亚移民和本地出生父母的子女的教育成就。调查结果表明，移民的孩子在五个科目和三个年级水平上的表现明显优于本土出生的澳大利亚人的孩子。虽然这反映了澳大利亚向以技能为基础的移民政策的转变，但基于父母原籍国和/或语言背景的表现差异如此之大，表明了文化资本的作用。此外，亚裔移民父母的子女表现优于其他原籍国父母的子女。来自非英语背景的移民父母的孩子的表现优于说英语的移民和土生土长的澳大利亚人的孩子。使用匹配技术，我们比较了来自本地出生和移民父母的相似背景的孩子。结果表明，诸如动机差异等不可观察的因素可能会推动移民子女取得相对较高的成就。