Age at immigration and high school dropouts

[The authors] focus on high school dropout rate among male and female immigrant children. [They] consider the relationship between the dropout rate and age of arrival of the immigrants. Using repeated cross sectional data from the Israeli Labor Force Surveys of 1996-2011 [the authors] show that the share of high school dropouts among immigrant children who arrived from the Former Soviet Union during 1989-1994 is at least double than among natives in the same age group. Further, [the authors] show that among immigrant youth there is a monotonic negative relation between age at arrival and the share of high school dropouts. To understand [the] results [the authors] present a theoretical framework that links between age at arrival in the host country, language proficiency, quality of education and wages.

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