Immigrant Education Gap Could Be Closing

The percentage of adult Latino immigrants with high-school diplomas has doubled in the last three decades, an indication that the education gap between such immigrants and native-born Americans could narrow, according to a new study from the Pew Hispanic Center.

The Pew, a Washington, D.C.-based arm of USC, tabulated Census Bureau survey data of adults ages 25 and older from 1970 to 2000 to make its findings. The study struck an optimistic note, emphasizing that the educational profiles of the Latino foreign-born are improving faster than those of native-born Americans of all ethnicities, although gaps remain, especially on college degrees.

B. Lindsay Lowell, Pew’s research director and the study’s primary author, said the data should counter any claims, made by some advocates of more immigration restrictions, that the education level of the Latino immigrant population is falling behind that of the U.S.-born.

“In the coming decades, the educational composition of the Latino foreign-born population will begin to look more like that of the American native-born population,” the report says. “Policymakers can feel confident that what seemed to be overwhelming problems associated with the past low levels of immigrant education are becoming surmountable.”

The report concedes that much of the potential for “gap closing” reflects the stagnant growth in education levels among native-born Americans, nearly 90% of whom have at least a high school education. That figure offers little room for improvement, the study says.

At the same time, the percentage of Latino immigrants who have at least a high school education has more than doubled, from 28% to nearly 59%.

In earning college degrees, however, Latino immigrants have not been able to keep pace. While the share of U.S.-born Americans completing college increased over 30 years from 17% to 35%, the Latino foreign-born figure went from 9% to 17%.

Lowell, a former director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, said that although the college figures represent a “challenge,” he expects a long-term narrowing of that gap in college statistics as well.

That is because statistics for Latino immigrants, he said, are weighed down by the large numbers of older immigrants, who often have little education.

Education levels for Latino immigrants as a whole will improve as that older generation of immigrants dies off, the report says.