Do Migrant Girls Always Perform Better? Differences between the Reading and Math Scores of 15-Year-Old Daughters and Sons of Migrants in PISA 2009 and Variations by Region of Origin and Country of Destination
As a follow-up of earlier analyses of the educational performance of all pupils with a migrationbackground with Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) waves 2003 and 2006, weanalyze the differences between the educational performance of 15-year old daughters and sons ofmigrants from specific regions of origin countries living in different destination countries. Weuse the newest PISA 2009 wave. Instead of analyzing only Western countries as destinationcountries, we analyze the educational performance of 16,612 daughters and 16,804 sons of migrantsin destination countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. We distinguish 62 origincountries and 12 origin areas in 30 destination countries. We test three hypotheses: 1) Thedaughters of migrants from poorer, more traditional regions perform much better in reading thancomparable sons of migrants from the same origin regions, while the daughters of migrants frommore affluent and liberal regions perform slightly better in reading than comparable sons ofmigrants from the same regions. 2) Individual socioeconomic background has a stronger effect onthe educational performance of daughters of migrants than on the performance of sons of migrants.3) The performance of female native pupils has a higher influence on the performance of migrantdaughters than the performance of male native pupils has on the performance of migrant sons. Thefirst hypothesis can only partly be accepted. Female migrant pupils have both higher reading andmath scores than comparable male migrant pupils, and these gender differences among migrant pupilsare larger than among comparable native pupils. The additional variation in educationalperformance by region of origin is, however, not clearly related to the poverty or traditionalismof regions. Neither the second nor the third hypothesis can be accepted, given our results.
