TrygFonden's Child Research Seminar Series: Sidsel Vive Jensen and Beatrice Rangvid, VIVE

Exploring the migrant achievement gap

Beatrice Schindler Rangvid and Sidsel Vive Jensen, VIVE

In this presentation we explore the gap in achievement between young children with and without a migrant background in Denmark. We include measures of SES, health, vulnerability and language in a decomposition analysis of the gap in order to 1) explore how large a part of the gap we can “explain” when we include all of the above factors simultaneously and 2) estimate how much “explanation” each of the included factors provide individually. We find that 100% of the gap is explained when we include all factors in the analysis. Language proficiency explains 75% of the gap, SES explains 25%, while the remaining factors (health and vulnerability) do not have additional explanatory power. We discuss different explanations for and interpretations of our results and make suggestions for further work.