Moving beyond mean differences: The role of educational systems in ethnic educational achievement and labor market inequality

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christoph Spörlein
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270579330

Using a cross-national comparative perspective, the proposed project aims to shed new light on conflicting evidence about the impact of educational systems on educational achievement and labor market outcomes. With regard to pupil achievement, researchers have argued that highly stratified educational systems more efficiently educate albeit at the cost of exacerbating inequality across students. Since there is little research to investigate this hypothesis with respect to ethnic inequality, we extend the underlying theoretical ideas and derive predictions concerning achievement differences between immigrants and natives. In a similar vein, we examine the impact of educational systems on ethnic labor market inequalities which to our knowledge has not been done before. For the most part, educational systems may have a very different impact in transferring manifest ethnic inequality from the school system to the labor market. Using a novel research design, we propose a test of these ideas that move beyond a pure focus on mean differences and provide a more general approach to the study of inequality. We aim to achieve this by explicitly modelling mean and concentration differences in educational and labor market inequality between immigrants and natives.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professorin Dr. Cornelia Kristen; Professor Dr. Clemens Kroneberg