Immigrant source country educational quality and Canadian labour market
outcomes
by Arthur Sweetman
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 234
Context
One issue in the labour market integration of immigrants to Canada
is the quality, or relative quality of their pre-Canadian educational
outcomes. There is evidence from international standardized tests that
there is substantial disparity in average performance across national
school systems. There is also evidence that these types of test scores
are associated with labour market outcomes, in particular earnings at
the level of the individual, and that even scores obtained at a very
young age are associated with outcomes decades later.
Objectives
This study aims to explore differences in the returns to education
of immigrants as a function of the average quality of education in each
immigrant's source country as measured by international test scores
in math and science. This has implications for the way settlement and
integration issues are perceived, and speaks directly to issues of credential
recognition.
Findings
Immigrants from source countries with lower quality educational outcomes,
as measured by international test scores, are observed to receive a
lower average return to their schooling in the Canadian labour market
than those from countries with higher quality results. In contrast to
immigrants educated outside of Canada, source country school outcomes
do not have an impact on those who immigrate at a young age. This reinforces
the idea that educational quality is an important factor in explaining
difference in returns to schooling in the Canadian labour market. Moreover,
this measure of quality is also seen to impact earnings within tightly
defined educational categories (e.g., those with a bachelor's
degree), demonstrating that quality matters both across, and within,
credential groupings.
Data Sources: Census data: 1986, 1991 and 1996 with quality measures from *Hanushek and Kimko (2000).
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the full publication.
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