sociology€¦ · sociology of education volume 82 july 2009 number 3 sociology of education volume...

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SOCIOLOGYOF

EDUCATIONVolume 82 July 2009 Number 3

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UNESCO and the Associated Schools Project:Symbolic Affirmation of World Community,

International Understanding, and Human RightsDAVID F. SUÁREZ, FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ, AND JEONG-

WOO KOO

School Ethnic Composition and Students’ IntegrationOutside and Inside Schools in Belgium

MIEKE VAN HOUTTE AND PETER A. J. STEVENS

Why Do Immigrant Youths Who Never Enroll in U.S. Schools Matter? School Enrollment Among Mexicans

and Non-Hispanic WhitesR. S. OROPESA AND NANCY S. LANDALE

Intergenerational Closure and Academic Achievement in High School:

A New Evaluation of Coleman’s Conjecture STEPHEN L. MORGAN AND JENNIFER J. TODD

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symposium, a meeting within the general meeting, which explores how the election of Barack Obama might signal a new politics of community in action. This mini-symposium consists of a cluster of sessions that are scheduled throughout the meetings featuring noted scholars such as Melissa Harris Lacewell, professor of political science at Princeton University; Gurminder

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MISSION STATEMENT: The journal provides a forum for studies in sociology of education and human social develop-ment throughout the life cycle. It publishes research from all methodologies that examines how social institutions andindividuals’ experiences in these institutions affect educational processes and social development. Such research mayspan various levels of analysis, from the individual to the structure of relations among social and educational institutions,and may encompass all stages and types of education at the individual, institutional, and organizational levels.

Hanna AyalonTel Aviv University

Pamela R. BennettJohns Hopkins University

William J. CarbonaroUniversity of Notre Dame

Wade M. ColeMontana State University

Elizabeth C. CookseyOhio State University

Susan A. DumaisLouisiana State University

Cynthia FelicianoUniversity of California–Irvine

Sara Goldrick-RabUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Eric GrodskyUniversity of California–Davis

Angel Lou HarrisPrinceton University

Joseph C. HermanowiczUniversity of Georgia

Charles HirschmanUniversity of Washington

Sylvia HurtadoUCLA

Douglas Lee LauenUniversity of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Kevin T. LeichtUniversity of Iowa

Samuel R. LucasUniversity of California–Berkeley

Daniel A. McFarlandStanford University

Lynn M. MulkeyUniversity of South Carolina–Beaufort

Brian PowellIndiana University

Kelly RaleyUniversity of Texas

Sean F. ReardonStanford University

John R. SchwilleMichigan State University

Salvatore SaporitoCollege of William and Mary

Christopher B. SwansonEditorial Projects in Education

Tony TamChinese University of Hong Kong

Edward E. TellesUniversity of California–Los Angeles

Marta TiendaPrinceton University

Sarah TurnerUniversity of Virginia

Karolyn TysonUniversity of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Julia WrigleyCUNY Graduate Center

MANAGING EDITORWendy Almeleh

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT GRADUATE STUDENT EDITORSJeff Keesler Nathan D. Jones and Timothy G. Ford

EXECUTIVE OFFICERSally T. Hillsman

SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION (ISSN 0038-0407) is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by theAmerican Sociological Association, 1430 K Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005-2529, and is printed byBoyd Printing Company, Albany, New York. Periodicals postage is paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailingoffices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sociology of Education, 1430 K Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington,DC 20005-2529.

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EDITORBarbara Schneider, Michigan State University

DEPUTY EDITORJohn Robert Warren, University of Minnesota

It’s Here...

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SOCIOLOGYOF

EDUCATIONVolume 82 July 2009 Number 3

Contents

UNESCO and the Associated Schools Project: Symbolic Affirmation of World Community, International Understanding, and Human Rights

DAVID F. SUÁREZ, FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ, AND JEONG-WOO KOO 197

School Ethnic Composition and Students’ Integration Outside and Inside Schools in Belgium

MIEKE VAN HOUTTE AND PETER A. J. STEVENS 217

Why Do Immigrant Youths Who Never Enroll in U.S. Schools Matter? School Enrollment Among Mexicans and Non-Hispanic Whites

R. S. OROPESA AND NANCY S. LANDALE 240

Intergenerational Closure and Academic Achievement in High School: A New Evaluation of Coleman’s Conjecture

STEPHEN L. MORGAN AND JENNIFER J. TODD 267

NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS

Editorial ProceduresAll papers considered appropriate for this journal are reviewed anonymously. To ensure anonymity, authors’names, institutional affiliations, and other identifying material should be placed on the title page only. Papersare accepted for publication subject to nonsubstantive, stylistic editing. A copy of the edited paper is sent tothe author for final review. Proofs of articles are sent only to authors who reside in the United States.Submission of a paper to a professional journal is considered an indication of the author’s commitment topublish in that journal. A paper submitted to this journal while it is under review for another journal will notbe accepted for review.

Preparation and Submission of Manuscripts.1. Type all copy (including indented material, references, and footnotes) double-spaced in no smaller than

12-point type using 11/2-inch margins on all sides.2. Type each table on a separate page. Insert a note in the text indicating where the table should appear.3. On an article’s acceptance, submit camera-ready art for all figures, rendered on a laser printer or as

glossy prints or electronic format.4. Include an abstract of no more than 100 words.5. Submit four copies of the paper and retain the original for your files. Enclose a stamped, self-addressed

postcard so we can acknowledge receipt of your paper.6. A check or money order for $25.00, payable to the American Sociological Association, must accompa-

ny each submission. This fee is waived for papers written by student members of the ASA. The submis-sion fee reflects a policy of the ASA Council and Committee on Publications, which affects all ASA jour-nals. It is a reluctant response to the accelerating costs of manuscript processing.

Reference Format1. In the text: All references to books, articles, and other works should be identified at the appropriate point

in the text by the surname of the author and year of publication; add page numbers only when citingstatistics or direct quotes. Endnotes should be used only for substantive observations and explanations.Subsequent citations of a source should be identified in the same way; do not use “ibid.,” “op. cit.,” or“loc. cit.”a. If the author’s name is part of the narrative, place only the year of publication in parentheses:

Duncan (1959). Otherwise, place both the name and the year, with no intervening punctuation,in parentheses: (Duncan 1959).

b. Insert page numbers, preceded by a colon after the year of publication: (Kuhn 1970:120–45).c. If the work cited has three or fewer authors, list all authors in the first citation; thereafter, include

only the name of the first author followed by “et al.” If the work has four or more authors, includeonly the name of the first author followed by “et al.” in all citations.

d. Abbreviate or shorten the names of institutional or corporate authors, making sure that the textcitation and the entry in the reference list begin with the same element.

e. Distinguish two or more works by the same author with the same publication date by appendingletters (a, b, c) to the date: (Levy 1965a).

f. Separate a series of references with semicolons and enclose them in a single pair of parentheses:(Featherman and Hauser 1979; Coleman et al. 1982; U.S. Bureau of Census 1981).

2. In the Reference List: List all entries alphabetically by author and, within author, by year of publication.List all authors in citations of multiauthor works; do not use “et al.” in the reference list.

Examples follow:Bourdieu, Pierre, 1977. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.” Pp. 487–511 in Power and Ideology

in Education, edited by J. Karabel and A.H. Halsey. New York: Oxford University Press.Coleman, James S., Thomas Hoffer, and Sally B. Kilgore. 1982a. “Cognitive Outcomes in Public and Private

Schools.” Sociology of Education 55:65–76.——. 1982b. High School Achievement: Public, Catholic and Other Private Schools Compared. New York: Basic.Mare, Robert D. 1979. “Change and Stability in Educational Stratification.” Paper presented at the annual

meeting of the American Sociological Association, Boston.Marx, Karl (1867) 1976. Capital. Vol. 1. Translated by S. Moore and E. Aveling. New York: International.U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1979. 1970 Census Population and Housing. Fourth Count Population Summary

Tape. Machine-readable data file. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census (producer). Rosslyn, VA:DUALabs (distributor).

Why Do Immigrant Youths Who NeverEnroll in U.S. Schools Matter?

School Enrollment Among Mexicans and Non-Hispanic Whites

R. S. OropesaNancy S. Landale

The Pennsylvania State University

Using data from the 2000 Public Use Sample of the U.S. census, this research examined how

estimates of school enrollment and school-work patterns among Mexican-origin adolescents

are affected by including or excluding young immigrants who never enrolled in U.S. schools.

The analysis demonstrates that a nontrivial share of adolescents who were born in Mexico

almost certainly never enrolled in U.S. schools; these youths most likely migrated to the United

States for work. Excluding these adolescents from analyses substantially reduces gaps in school

enrollment between Mexicans and whites and between native and foreign-born Mexicans.

Excluding never-enrolled immigrant youths also changes the relationship between the dura-

tion of U.S. residence and idleness among Mexican immigrant youths, revealing that addition-

al years of residence in the United States increase the likelihood of being out of school and not

working compared to being in school and not working. Overall, inferences about the level of

school enrollment and intraethnic differences in school enrollment by duration of residence

depend on how those who are likely to have never enrolled in U.S. schools are treated.

Inferences about interethnic differences are also affected, although they are somewhat less

sensitive to this issue.

Sociology of Education 2009, Vol. 82 (July): 240–266 240

Over the past several decades, theimplications of recent trends in U.S.immigration have been hotly debat-

ed. Both the rising volume of immigrationand shifts in immigrants’ national originshave spurred concerns about the implicationsof migration for the economic, cultural, andpolitical fabric of American society.Immigration from Mexico is at center stage inthese debates because of the large number ofMexican immigrants and the substantial

share of undocumented migrants amongthem. Currently, 10–12 million foreign-bornpersons from Mexico are living in the UnitedStates, more than half of whom are undocu-mented (Bean et al. 2001; Grieco 2003;Passel 2002). Although evidence on theireducational selectivity is mixed, this largenumber of documented and undocumentedMexican immigrants has raised concernsabout whether the relative educational “qual-ity” of immigrants is declining and about the

immigrants’ long-term prospects for assimila-tion (see Borjas 1999; Chiquiar and Hanson2005; Feliciano 2005; Ibarraran and Lubotsky2005; Orrenius and Zavodny 2005).

The influx of Mexican immigrants hasplayed a substantial role in the rapid growthof the Mexican-origin population (NationalResearch Council 2006). In addition, the com-bination of high fertility and a youthful immi-grant population has resulted in an age struc-ture for the Mexican-origin population as awhole that is highly concentrated in theyoungest age groups. In fact, 38 percent ofMexicans in the United States were youngerthan age 18 in 2000, compared to 24 percentof non-Hispanic whites (Therian and Ramirez2001). Because of this age structure, the long-term social and economic integration ofMexicans is tied to the fortunes of youths whoare immigrants or the children of immigrants.

A key determinant of the future prospectsof this group is educational attainment, withhigh school completion generally consideredto be the minimum level that must beattained to certify competence in basic skillsthat are necessary to function productively.Unfortunately, the share of Mexican youthswho drop out of high school remains high.According to our calculations from the 2000census, one-fourth of Mexicans aged 16–19had left high school before graduating (43percent of the foreign born and 14 percent ofthe U.S. born), compared to 7 percent of non-Hispanic whites (Ruggles et al., 2008; see alsoFry, 2003; Schneider, Martinez, and Owens2006).

Given the importance of education forimmigrant incorporation, the research pre-sented here focused on the complexities ofunderstanding high school enrollment status(or dropout) in conjunction with employmentamong youths who were born in Mexico.1Using the 2000 census, we had two objec-tives. Our first objective was to assess theextent to which estimates of high schoolenrollment are sensitive to assumptions aboutwho constitutes the “at-risk” populationamong immigrants, that is, whether all immi-grant adolescents are considered to be at riskor only those who are likely to have enteredthe U.S. educational system. Our secondobjective was to examine the implications ofthese assumptions for inferences about themagnitude of differences in enrollment and

employment by ethnicity (Mexicans andwhites), nativity (among Mexicans), andlength of U.S. residence (among those born inMexico). As part of this analysis, we controlledfor key covariates that may account forobserved associations. In addition to address-ing these objectives and developing a set ofresearch recommendations, we profilednever-enrolled Mexico-born youths to gaininsights into their situations and likely futures.

TRENDS, DIFFERENCES, ANDSOURCES OF BIAS

Whether one examines educational attain-ment among adults or school enrollmentamong adolescents, the conventional wisdomis that the educational prospects of Americanshave improved over the past several decades.By most accounts, educational attainment incompleted years has increased, and the likeli-hood of dropping out of high school hasdecreased. Between 1972 and 2004, the sta-tus dropout rate for 16–24 year olds declinedfrom 15 percent to 10 percent (U.S.Department of Education 2006:Table 7).2 Atthe same time, gains in educational attain-ment and declines in school dropout have notbeen experienced equally by all groups. From1980 to 2000, the average years of educationincreased from 12.8 to 13.6 for U.S.-bornwhites (aged 25–59), but the gain was weak-er (from 9.4 to 9.8 years) for Mexicans.Mexicans’ weaker gain can be attributedlargely to the growing share of immigrantsand their relatively low levels of education. In2000, foreign-born Mexicans averaged 8.5years of education, and U.S.-born Mexicansaveraged 12.1 years (Duncan, Hotz, and Trejo2006). Furthermore, Mexican immigrant ado-lescents and young adults are among themost likely of any group to be statusdropouts.

The conventional wisdom on high schoolcompletion has not gone unchallenged.Heckman and LaFontaine (2007; see alsoWarren and Halpern-Manners 2007) suggest-ed that official figures conceal the fact thatthere has actually been a slight decline in highschool graduation since the late 1960s and alack of convergence in the graduation rates ofracial/ethnic groups over time. The mislead-

Immigrant Youths Who Never Enroll in U.S. Schools 241

ing picture provided by official sources (suchas the Current Population Survey) can beattributed to numerous potential sources ofbias, such as the inclusion of those who earngeneral equivalency diplomas (GEDs) amonghigh school graduates, the exclusion of theincarcerated or otherwise institutionalizedpopulation, and the inclusion of immigrantswho never enrolled in schools in the UnitedStates.

For our purposes, the implications ofincluding or excluding immigrants who neverattended U.S. schools are especially impor-tant. Unfortunately, there is a lack of concep-tual clarity in both empirical research and offi-cial reports about when such immigrantsshould be included and the implications ofthis decision for the interpretation of results.An unknown percentage of Mexican immi-grant youths dropped out of the educationalsystem in Mexico before they migrated. Theywere never enrolled in U.S. schools becausethey came to this country to find work ratherthan to attend school. These youths are ofinterest when the aim is to describe or analyzethe educational outcomes of the full popula-tion of Mexican adolescent immigrants.However, they are irrelevant to understandingthe process of dropping out of U.S. schoolsbecause they never attended school in theUnited States.

BACKGROUND

A large number of sociological studies ofschool enrollment among immigrant youthshave either implicitly (Driscoll 1999; Warren1996; White and Glick 2000) or explicitly(Glick and White 2003; Hirschman 2001;Landale, Oropesa, and Llanes 1998; Perreira,Harris, and Lee 2006, 2007) been guided byassimilation theories.3 Whether attention toassimilation is implicit or explicit, these stud-ies have focused on how educational disad-vantage changes as immigrant children spendtime in the host society and whether it peaksamong immigrant children or their native-born coethnic counterparts. They have alsosought to identify the explanatory mecha-nisms for differences in educational outcomesby duration of residence and nativity (or gen-eration), as well as to demonstrate the contri-

bution of nativity-related factors to racial/eth-nic differences. This research has been pur-sued in the service of larger concerns aboutwhether immigrants and their descendentswill follow pathways of incorporation thatlead toward or away from the middle-classmainstream of American society.

Studies that have purported to examineeducational outcomes using an assimilationframework have relied on both samplesdrawn from the general population of youths(Hirschman 2001; Landale et al. 1998; Warren1996) and samples drawn from youths inschools (Glick and White 2003; Perreira et al.2006, 2007, White and Glick 2000). For ourpurposes, the distinction between these twotypes of samples is crucial because the gener-alizations that can be made are limited by thelink between the sample and the populationof interest. In practice, however, the literaturehas often been fuzzy in this regard. For exam-ple, school-based studies have sometimesdrawn conclusions about the educationalprogress of immigrant youths in general with-out careful consideration of the limits of aschool-based sample, and population-basedstudies have sometimes drawn conclusionsabout educational processes in the UnitedStates without recognizing that some immi-grant youths were never enrolled in U.S.schools.

School-Based and Population-Based Studies

Longitudinal studies using school-based sam-ples have generated an inconsistent set offindings. Focusing on the effect of nativity orgeneration, some studies have documentedelevated risks of dropout among immigrants(Perreira et al. 2006; White and Glick 2000),while others have de-emphasized differencesby nativity in the risk of school dropout beforecontrols were included (Driscoll 1999).Moreover, some studies have suggested thatthe conclusion that immigrant youths are notespecially likely to drop out is robust in multi-variate models that controlled for languageand various background factors (Glick andWhite 2003). In other longitudinal school-based studies, multivariate analyses have sug-gested that immigrant children have lowerrisks of dropout than do their native-born co-ethnic counterparts. Perreira et al. (2006:533)

242 Oropesa and Landale

concluded that “adjusted for differences inthe forms of capital available to them,dropout rates are always lowest among immi-grant children and highest among the native”(see also Driscoll 1999; White and Glick2000). Findings that suggest that immigrantchildren are not the most likely to have nega-tive educational outcomes have been inter-preted as supporting perspectives that pointto the possible deleterious consequences ofexposure to the United States (i.e., segment-ed assimilation; see Portes and Rumbaut2001, 2006). It should be noted that Pereiraet al.’s findings also indicate that Hispanicimmigrants who were aged 6 or older on theirarrival in the United States do not experiencethe same advantage as do those who arrivedbefore age 6.

To a limited extent, studies that have usedpopulation-based surveys and censuses havegenerated similar findings. Although he didnot provide a comprehensive description ofschool enrollment among their native-bornco-ethnics, Hirschman (2001) examined theexperience of 33 groups of foreign-born15–17 year olds using the 1990 census. Hisresults suggested that nonenrollment wasmuch higher among recent Mexican immi-grants than among earlier Mexican immi-grants. About 42 percent of the males and 37percent of the females who immigrated in theeight years prior to the census were not inschool. The comparable figures for Mexicanmales and females who immigrated as youngchildren were considerably lower (13 percentand 12 percent, respectively). This finding isconsistent with those of other studies basedon census data that have shown elevated risksof dropout and nonenrollment among youthswho migrate to the United States at olderages (Landale et al. 1998; Warren 1996).Regardless of age at entry, however, foreign-born Mexican youths were at a greater risk ofnonenrollment than were native-born youthsin general (Hirschman 2001) and native-bornMexicans (Schneider et al. 2006; Warren1996).4

Fry (2005) updated and replicated thesefindings with the 2000 census. Similar to priorstudies, he found that status dropout rates of15–17-year-old immigrants from a variety ofcountries (including Mexico) are markedlyhigher among those who arrived within eightyears of the census than among those who

arrived earlier. Fry’s analysis also identifiedimmigrant youths who may have had school-ing difficulties in the country of origin prior tomigrating using census information on thehighest completed grade, age of immigra-tion, and the usual educational attainment ofU.S. youths at that age. Fry suggested thatrecent arrivals with “interrupted” schooling inthe country of origin are especially likely to beschool dropouts in the United States.Although this unpublished study was limitedto descriptive analyses, it illuminates the needfor greater attention to possible discontinu-ities in schooling prior to migration as well asage at migration and English proficiency.

Overall, one finding appears to be consis-tent across general population studies: Inbivariate analyses of Hispanics in general andMexicans in particular, immigrant adolescentswho are recent arrivals (therefore who arrivedat older ages) are more likely to be out ofschool than are immigrant adolescents whoarrived earlier in their lives. In assessments ofthe relative risks of dropout, Warren (1996)and Landale et al. (1998) also showed thatMexican immigrant youths are more likely tobe status dropouts than are non-Hispanicwhites or native-born Mexican Americansbefore various background factors are con-trolled. After family background and languageare controlled, differences between nativeand foreign-born Mexicans are largely elimi-nated. These results diverge from thosereported for some school-based samplesreviewed earlier. One potential source ofdivergence is that all school-based samplesomit, by design, youths who have never beenenrolled in U.S. schools.

School Enrollment andEmployment

The potential existence of a large number ofMexican immigrant youths who neverenrolled in U.S. schools, as well as a largenumber of dropouts from U.S. schools, directsattention to the school-to-work transition. Areport by the National Research Council(2006) suggested that economic pressures onfamilies may constrain Mexican children’sschooling and encourage their employment.This pressure stems from several factors. First,women potentially contribute income to fam-ilies, but Mexican-born women have a lower


employment rate (56 percent) than theirnative-born counterparts (76 percent) andnon-Hispanic white women (80 percent).Second, both foreign- and native-bornMexicans earn considerably less than dowhites, regardless of their gender, largelybecause of differences in human capital.However, the rate of return to education issomewhat lower for foreign-born Mexicansthan for native-born Mexicans (Duncan et al.2006). Last, Mexican immigrant householdshave less than one-third the per capitaincome of households headed by whites andare less likely to use public assistance (Reimers2006).

These findings describe circumstances thatprovide an incentive for employment amongMexican youths in immigrant families. Whilethey may contribute to departures fromschool for employment, a number of recentstudies have found that school enrollmentand employment can be compatible (Staffand Mortimer 2007; Warren, LePore, andMare 2000). These studies have challengedthe conventional view that employment perse necessarily impinges on a student’s abilityto remain in high school or to matriculate tocollege because it competes with school for ayouth’s time and energy.

Although enrollment and employmenttransitions may intersect in complex ways thatvary by ethnicity and nativity, previous studiesof adolescents have concentrated more onethnic differences than on nativity differenceswithin ethnic groups. In contrast to what maybe expected from economic pressures alone,one study that used the 1979 NationalLongitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) suggest-ed that Hispanic adolescents aged 14–15 areless likely than are white adolescents to work(Rothstein 2001). In addition to demonstrat-ing their lower likelihood of making normalprogress and graduating from high school,bivariate analyses from another set of studiesthat were based on the 1979 NLSY suggestedthat male and female Hispanic adolescentseither differ little from whites (Bacolod andHotz 2006) or are slightly less likely than arewhites to work during high school (Ahituvand Tienda 2004; Tienda and Ahituv 1996).Moreover, Ahituv and Tienda’s multivariateanalyses indicated that Hispanic youths arenot more likely to experience deleterious edu-cational outcomes once differences in group

composition are taken into account. Theiranalyses also suggested that even thoughsome labor force attachment may be associat-ed with positive educational outcomes for allracial and ethnic groups, extensive workhours impinge on educational outcomes. Thisnegative link appears to be strongest forfemale Hispanic youths (Ahituv and Tienda2004) and male Hispanic youths from disad-vantaged backgrounds (Tienda and Ahituv1996). Still other studies have suggested thatHispanics are not more likely than are whitesto drop out of school for employment(Stearns and Glennie 2006).

As we have just alluded, insights from thisliterature have been limited by the relativeabsence of attention to nativity or genera-tional differences among Mexicans. In one ofthe few studies to focus on generational dif-ferences in school-employment patternsamong Mexican adolescents, Landale et al.(1998) used 1990 census data to examinethree states: in school, out of school andworking, and out of school and not working(or idle). Their findings indicated substantialdifferences in the likelihood of being out ofschool and working (versus being in school)by generation and age of migration amongMexicans. Compared to U.S.-born Mexicansand Mexicans who migrated to the UnitedStates at younger ages, Mexicans who migrat-ed to the United States during their teens areespecially likely to be out of school and work-ing. These teenage migrants are also morelikely than are others to be idle, in large partbecause of their much greater likelihood ofnot being enrolled in school. It is noteworthythat this study did not attempt to separateimmigrants who had enrolled in U.S. schoolsfrom immigrants who had never enrolled inU.S. schools.

Taken as a whole, the empirical literatureprovides important background for under-standing school enrollment and school-worklinkages among Mexican youths. Yet, it is dif-ficult to integrate findings because of inade-quate attention to the implications of sampleselection criteria. School-based samplesexclude youths who have never been enrolledin U.S. schools. Census-based studies mayinclude all youths, but decisions about analyt-ic samples may inadvertently omit some stu-dents who have never been enrolled in U.S.schools. For example, studies that have been


restricted to the children of household heads(Warren 1996) or children who can bematched to their parents (Landale et al. 1998)may disproportionately exclude never-enrolled immigrant adolescents because suchyouths are less likely to live with their parentsthan are other youths. Such decisions may becrucial for studies in which the theoreticalframework is anchored in the experience ofthe total population of immigrants asopposed to the population of immigrants inschools. If some segments of immigrantyouths are excluded from the former studies,then estimates of nativity or generational dif-ferences in dropout may be biased.

THE STUDY

Focusing on Mexicans and whites, we usedthe 2000 decennial census to examine schoolenrollment and joint school-employment pat-terns among 16–17 year-old youths. Censusdata are advantageous because they include alarge number of adolescents in specific ethnicand nativity groups. In addition, the censusprovides the opportunity to address an issuethat has been recognized in prior studies(e.g., Fry 2003, 2005), but not fully analyzed.As we have emphasized, an unknown per-centage of foreign-born Mexican youths arenot enrolled in school because they migratedto the United States after they had droppedout of school in Mexico. Many migrated tothe United States as part of the transition topostschooling adulthood. The implications ofexcluding or including these youths in analy-ses of school enrollment or dropout remainunderstudied.

Because the importance of this topic iscontingent to some extent on group size, wefirst describe a method for indirectly identify-ing the never-enrolled segment of the immi-grant population and show the implicationsof excluding them for estimates of schoolenrollment and employment among foreign-born Mexicans. We next investigate the impli-cations of including or excluding never-enrolled youths for assessing the magnitudeof interethnic and intraethnic differences inoutcomes. We then present recommenda-tions on how this group should be dealt within future investigations.5

These research objectives are importantbecause they have significant implications forefforts to evaluate sociological theories andperspectives using census data. Specifically,theories of assimilation share an interest indocumenting and explaining ethnogenera-tional patterns of youths’ disengagementfrom schooling and the labor force (Portesand Rumbaut 2001, 2006; see also Alba andNee 2003). Concerns about downward trajec-tories that are set in motion by schooldropout and unemployment are prominent inthe assimilation literature. Yet, efforts to eval-uate various theoretical perspectives cannotbe divorced from assumptions about whoforms the at-risk population among immi-grants because the immigrant generationserves as an anchor for comparisons that areintended to show the trajectory of education-al assimilation.

The results presented later in this articledemonstrate that researchers must be explicitabout the population of interest. Researcherswho are concerned with the educational tran-sitions of the Mexican-origin population inthe U.S. school system should remove thenever enrolled. Those who are interested inthe prospects of the Mexican-origin popula-tion as a whole should recognize and includethis group to minimize coverage bias andimprove statistical inferences. These rudimen-tary guidelines have not been adhered to inthe past in census-based research for a varietyof reasons, including the absence of an algo-rithm to identify the never enrolled.

Data and Methods

In our study, we used the 5 percent Public UseMicrodata Sample of the 2000 U.S. census, adata set that consists of about one-third of the16 percent of all housing units that receivedthe long form of the census. The analysis waslimited to adolescents who were aged 16–17at the time of the census and were identifiedas Mexican or non-Hispanic white. The agecutoffs were guided by both substantive andpractical considerations. Age 16 was chosenas the lower age because most states havecompulsory school attendance until age 16.In addition, information on employmentactivities is available in the census only forthose who are aged 16 and older. Age 17 waschosen as the upper age cutoff because of our


interest in persons who have not reached theage of majority, persons who could normallybe expected to live with at least one parent,and persons who should not have made thetransition to college by the reference date ofthe census question on school enrollment(February 1, 2000).

All adolescents who were living in eitherinstitutional or noninstitutional group quar-ters were eliminated from the analysis. Theexclusion of these adolescents is warrantedfor several reasons, including the need tomaintain consistency with prior studies andthe fact that the number of adolescents livingin these settings is extremely small. Just .3percent of foreign-born Mexican adolescentsare institutionalized, and .5 percent live in“other” group quarters. Estimates in ouranalyses are not sensitive to this decision.6

Our analysis focused on two dependentvariables. The first is school enrollment(enrolled versus not enrolled), and the secondis a measure that combines both enrollmentand employment to identify those who areenrolled in school and not employed, thosewho are both enrolled and employed, thosewho are not enrolled and are employed, andthose who are idle (not enrolled and notemployed). One of the virtues of the com-bined measure is that it captures the fullrange of situations of adolescents. At thesame time, cross-sectional data cannot direct-ly address issues that are related to thesequencing of employment and enrollmenttransitions. Some students may have droppedout of school with a job in hand, while othersmay not have found employment or maynever have been enrolled in U.S. schools tobegin with. We discuss our approach to iden-tifying the latter group later.

The literature on Mexican youths hasfocused on two independent variables: nativi-ty and generation. Unfortunately, the censusis more amenable to analyses of the role ofnativity than of the role of generation becauseit does not provide information on the birth-place of the parents of each person in thehousehold. Thus, after excluding those whowere born abroad of American parents(Hirschman 2001), we examined Mexicanswho were born in Mexico (N = 11,826),Mexicans who were born in the United States(N = 24,503), foreign-born whites (N =3,967), and native-born whites (N =

257,492).7 In analyses that were limited tothose born in Mexico, we included a measureof U.S. exposure, that is, the number of yearsin the United States based on the year ofentry.

Independent Variables The multivariateanalysis included several covariates thatdescribe the characteristics of youths. In addi-tion to age (16 versus 17) and gender, weexamined the youth’s relationship to thehousehold head. Using children of the headas the reference category, we used dummyvariables that separately identify youths whoare “heads, spouses, or unmarried partners”;siblings; grandchildren; cousins (and aunts oruncles); other relatives; and other nonrela-tives. Another variable indicated the numberof parents that each youth had residing in thehousehold (those with no parents or one par-ent versus those who lived with two parents).These are potentially important control vari-ables, given variation by ethnicity and nativityin various indicators of family structure andliving arrangements that may be associatedwith educational outcomes (Landale,Oropesa, and Bradatan 2006).

Investigations of educational and employ-ment outcomes among immigrants havedrawn attention to language proficiency as anindicator of human capital (Duncan et al.2006). English-language proficiency wasdetermined from a question on how well theyouth spoke English. We distinguished thosewho spoke English “not at all” or “not well”from those who spoke English “well” or “verywell.”

Given the interest in new immigrant desti-nations and school policy, we also includedmeasures of region of residence and eachstate’s age of required school attendance.Region is described by nine dummy variablesthat contrast standard census regions with areference category that consists of states alongthe U.S.-Mexico border. Age of requiredschool attendance in each state describes theinstitutional environment for school enroll-ment (see Angrist and Krueger 1991). We dis-tinguished among states with compulsoryenrollment up to age 16, 17, and 18.

Our ability to include a comprehensive setof covariates was limited by the content of thecensus and the aims of our study. Studies ofschooling should ideally include information


on parental characteristics that play a role inthe intergenerational transmission of status,especially parental education. Doing so isproblematic with the census because no ques-tions pertain directly to parental characteris-tics for each person in the household. Someresearchers have worked around this limita-tion by linking the records of children to thoseof coresident parents, but the universe ofinterest in these studies is children living withtheir parents (Landale et al. 1998). This proce-dure was inadequate for our study becauseour universe of interest is the noninstitutional-ized population, irrespective of whether theywere living with their parents, and parentalcharacteristics could not be retrieved foryouths who did not live with their parents.Although the education of the householdhead could serve as a proxy, we did notinclude this covariate because the errorinvolved in substituting the head’s educationwould be systematically associated with nativ-ity and ethnicity; that is, the error would belarger for foreign-born Mexicans because theyhave complex living arrangements.

Similar concerns provided the basis for ourdecision to exclude other variables from themultivariate analysis. For example, ideally wewould have liked to identify children fromfamilies whose incomes fell below the officialfederal poverty threshold and children whowere raised in families that provided limitedexposure to English because children fromdisadvantaged backgrounds are less well pre-pared when they enter the school system andare more likely to leave school than are others(Schneider et al. 2006). We did not includethese variables because the census describesthe situation only of the current household,not the household of the family of origin.Nonetheless, we present descriptive informa-tion on poverty and linguistic isolation toenrich our portrait of Mexican youths.

Plan of Analysis As we noted earlier, onechallenge to studying school enrollment withcross-sectional data is identification of the at-risk population. Following procedures devel-oped in studies of education and labor marketprocesses among adults (Betts and Lofstrom2000; Chiswick 1978; Dávila and Mora 2000;see Fry 2003, 2005), we used information onage at immigration and the last grade ofschool completed to identify the segment of

the 16–17-year-old immigrant populationthat is not at risk of enrollment. This segmentis ultimately defined as nonenrolled youthswhose age at migration is greater than orequal to their highest completed grade plus6.8 For example, a 17 year old whose highestcompleted grade is the 6th grade (normallycompleted at age 12) and who entered theUnited States at age 15 is unlikely to havebeen enrolled in school in this country. A 17year old who completed the 10th grade andentered this country at age 12 was probablyenrolled in school in the United States.

This is an indirect method for identifyingthe never enrolled. Some imprecision may beintroduced by variation in the ages of entry toschool, grade placement, and inconsistencyin the responses of serial migrants to censusquestions that ask for year of migration(Redstone and Massey 2005).9 We willdemonstrate how assumptions about thehighest grade completed, the age of entryinto school (used to determine age of com-pletion), and migration during the same yearas school completion affect estimates of thesize of the never-enrolled population.

After presenting information on the impactof assumptions on estimates of the relativesize of the population that is not at risk ofdropping out of U.S. schools, we describehow the inclusion or exclusion of this groupaffects estimates of the school enrollment andemployment patterns of the ethnonativitygroups of interest. We then present a sociode-mographic profile of the never enrolled and amultivariate analysis that focuses on the con-sequences of ethnicity, nativity, and time inthe United States for schooling and work. Thisanalysis was performed with SUDAAN toadjust for the nesting of observations withinhouseholds—some of the 16–17 year olds inour sample are not independent observationsbecause they live in the same household. Inaddition, all results are based on weighteddata, with the weights adjusted to retain theunweighted sample size of each group.

In summary, our analysis focuses on apotential source of coverage error in studies ofschool enrollment among Mexican immigrantyouths. This topic is within the purview of thegrowing literature on issues of measurementand data sources that are pertinent to docu-menting levels and trends in high schoolgraduation (Swanson 2004; Warren and


Halpern-Manners 2007). The implications ofnonenrollment among immigrants have beenrecognized as a theoretical possibility for adultimmigrants (Swanson 2004) and youths(Hirschman 2001), but have been underex-plored in the literature. We contribute furtherto these efforts by clarifying how coverageerror can be reduced by either including orexcluding the never enrolled, depending onthe theoretical and research context of a par-ticular study.

RESULTS

Estimates of School Enrollmentand Employment

Table 1 presents a range of estimates of thepercentage of foreign-born Mexican youthsaged 16–17 who never enrolled in U.S.schools. The estimates differ as a result ofassumptions about the age of entry into firstgrade, the grade level of the highest year ofcompleted education for those who fall intocensus intervals (e.g., 5th or 6th, 7th or 8thgrade),10 and whether school dropout

occurred before or after migration when bothevents occurred in the same year. The top fig-ure in each cell is based on the assumptionthat those who ended their education in thesame year that they migrated completed theireducation in Mexico (or elsewhere for for-eign-born whites). The bottom (bracketed)figure is based on the assumption that schooldropout occurred subsequent to immigrationfor this group.

A cursory inspection of Table 1 reveals thatattention should focus primarily on foreign-born Mexicans, since variation across the esti-mates is trivial for foreign-born whites.Among those who were born in Mexico, with-in-column comparisons show that the esti-mates are relatively unaffected by decisionsabout how to treat educational levels whenthe census reports an interval for completededucation. However, within-row and within-cell comparisons reveal that estimates of therelative size of the never-enrolled populationdepend somewhat on the assumed age ofentry into the 1st grade and the treatment ofthose who migrated at the same age that theycompleted their schooling. Focusing on themost common ages of entry into the 1st


Table 1. Estimated Percentage of Foreign-Born Youths Aged 16–17 Who Were NeverEnrolled in U.S. Schools Under Different Assumptions

Assumed Age of Entry into First Grade

Age 6 Age 7

Mexican White Mexican White

Assumed Grade Level (1) (2) (3) (4)

Low 17.5 1.6 14.8 1.2[14.8] [1.2] [12.5] [.9]

Midpoint 17.0 1.6 14.2 1.2[14.8] [1.2] [12.5] [.9]

High 17.0 1.6 14.2 1.2[14.2] [1.2] [10.8] [.8]

Note: All the percentages are weighted. Each percentage corresponds to the assumed ageof entry into the first grade (column) and the assumed grade level for grouped categories inthe census (rows). The top figure counts those who migrated during the same year that theycompleted school as having completed school in Mexico (or elsewhere for whites). Thus, thisgroup is counted among never-enrolled adolescents in U.S. schools. The bracketed figurescount these adolescents as having enrolled in U.S. schools.

grade in Mexico (age 6 or 7) and assumingthat school dropout preceded migration forthose who left school and migrated at thesame age, the estimates of the never enrolledrange from 14.2 percent to 17.5 percent. Ifwe assume that migration preceded schooldropout, then estimates range from 10.8 per-cent to 14.8 percent (bracketed figures inColumns 3 and 1). In additional analyses, wedetermined that the majority of cases inwhich migration and school completionoccurred in the same year involved individualswho ended their schooling after the 9th or10th grade. Given that these are commonstopping points for education in Mexico, it islikely that most of these adolescents finishedschool in Mexico and subsequently migratedto the United States. Thus, we rely on the var-ious assumptions underlying the middleunbracketed estimate (17.0 percent, ratherthan 14.8 percent, in Column 1, Row 2) toidentify immigrant youths who never enrolled

in school in the United States. The results arenot sensitive to this decision.11

School enrollment and activity patterns ofMexican and white youths are presented inTable 2. Panel A presents information fornever-enrolled Mexican immigrants (Column1), ever-enrolled Mexican immigrants(Column 2), the total Mexican immigrantpopulation (Column 3, never enrolled andever enrolled combined), and native-bornMexicans. Because few were classified asnever enrolled (N = 61), we did not disaggre-gate foreign-born whites into never enrolledand ever enrolled (Column 5).

Panel A shows that there is little differencein school enrollment between U.S.-bornMexicans (94 percent) and whites (96 per-cent). However, there is a surprising differ-ence in the work patterns of those who are inschool. Native-born whites (35 percent) aremore likely than are native-born Mexicans (21percent) and every other group to be in


Table 2. Enrollment and Employment Activity Status of 16–17 Year Olds, by Race andNativity (percentage)

Mexican Non-Hispanic White

Foreign NativeBorn Born

Never Ever Foreign NativeEnrolled Enrolled Total Born Born

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Panel A. Total SampleIn School 86.0 71.4 93.5 95.7 96.2

Employed 15.9 13.2 20.6 23.2 35.1Not employed 70.1 58.2 72.9 72.5 61.1

Not in School 14.0 28.6 6.5 4.4 3.9Employed 55.7 6.3 14.7 1.9 1.0 1.5

Not employed 44.3 7.7 13.9 4.6 3.4 2.4

Panel B. Not in School

Employed 55.7 45.0 51.4 29.2 22.7 38.5Not Employed 44.3 55.0 48.6 70.8 77.3 61.5

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0(Unweighted N) (1,981) (9,845) (11,826) (24,503) (3,967) (257,492)

Note: All percentages are based on weighted data. Never-enrolled non-Hispanic whites areincluded with their ever-enrolled counterparts to simplify the table. Thus, Columns 3 and 5 arecomparable. Also, foreign-born Mexicans were born in Mexico.

school and working. The results also demon-strate the extent to which school enrollmentis structured by nativity for Mexicans, as wellas the sensitivity of estimates to the exclusionof the never-enrolled population. As noted,94 percent of native-born Mexicans are inschool, and 73 percent are in school and notworking. In comparison, just 71 percent offoreign-born Mexicans are in school, and 58percent are in school and not working. Thesedifferences are substantial, but a large share ofeach difference is due to the inclusion of thenever enrolled in the calculations. Indeed,about 86 percent of foreign-born Mexicanswho were ever enrolled are in school, and 70percent are enrolled and not working.Conversely, the foreign born (29 percent) aremuch more likely than are the native born (7percent) to be out of school, but if the neverenrolled are excluded from calculations forforeign-born Mexicans, the nonenrollmentrate is only 14 percent.

Also of interest in Table 2 are the work pat-terns of Mexican youths who are not in school(Panel B). About 56 percent of foreign-bornMexican youths who never enrolled in U.S.schools are working. This figure is substantiallyhigher than the employment rates of 45 per-cent for their ever-enrolled counterparts whoare not in school and 29 percent for native-born Mexicans who are not in school. At thesame time, foreign-born Mexican youths whoenter but later drop out of U.S. schools aremore likely to be employed (45 percent) thanare those who remain in school (18 = 15.9/86).Thus, among those who are not in school,never-enrolled foreign-born Mexicans are theleast likely to be idle, and native-born Mexicansare the most likely to be idle.

A Profile of the Never Enrolled

Table 3 provides additional insights into thecircumstances of never-enrolled and ever-enrolled youths by showing their demograph-ic and socioeconomic characteristics. Becausethey are central to the issues at hand, weemphasize foreign-born Mexicans. We areespecially interested in determining whetherthe group that we classify as never enrolledhas a profile that is consistent with what wemay expect for labor migrants. Descriptivestatistics appear in bold face for variables onwhich the never enrolled stand out.

The first column shows that never-enrolledforeign-born Mexican youths are distinct. Forexample, the mean number of years in theUnited States for the never enrolled is 1.5.This figure is substantially lower than themean of 7.6 years for those who have attend-ed U.S. schools. The never enrolled are alsodifferent from the ever-enrolled and native-born Mexicans on other characteristics. Thenever enrolled are older (64 percent are aged17 versus 50 percent for the ever enrolled)and are much more likely to be male (72 per-cent). Moreover, only 18 percent of never-enrolled foreign-born Mexicans are childrenof household heads, and 81 percent do notlive with at least one parent.12 Three-fourthsof this group live with nonrelatives (26 per-cent), siblings (26 percent), cousins (20 per-cent), or other relatives (4 percent).Moreover, just 17 percent of the neverenrolled speak English well or very well.Consistent with the recent geographic expan-sion of labor migrants beyond traditionalgateway states, never-enrolled foreign-bornMexican youths are less likely than are otherMexicans to live in states along the border.Instead, they are more likely to live in SouthAtlantic states. Their distribution across statesclassified by the minimum age at whichyouths can leave school is unremarkable.Overall, the profile of the never enrolled sug-gests that they are labor migrants who aremore likely than not to be emancipated fromtheir families of origin.

The linguistic isolation and poverty statusof adolescents’ households (not shown inTable 3) also provide insights into these ado-lescents’ circumstances, even though theycannot be used as predictors because of theirpotential endogeneity. Fully two-thirds ofnever-enrolled Mexican immigrants live inhouseholds that are linguistically isolated (i.e.no one aged 14 or older speaks English verywell). This figure is substantially higher thanthe figures for ever-enrolled Mexican immi-grants (33 percent) and native-born Mexicans(4 percent). In keeping with their living situa-tions, the never enrolled are also relativelylikely to be poor. More than 40 percent ofnever-enrolled Mexican immigrants haveincomes that are below the poverty line, com-pared to 33 percent of ever-enrolled Mexicanimmigrants and 21 percent of native-bornMexicans. Needless to say, such figures lend



Table 3. Descriptive Statistics

Non-Hispanic Mexican White

Foreign Born

Never Ever Total Native Foreign NativeEnrolled Enrolled Born Born Born

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Mean Years in the United States 1.5 7.6 6.6 — 6.9 —

Age% 17 63.9 50.2 52.6 51.0 51.2 50.0

Sex% Male 72.3 55.6 58.5 50.2 50.2 51.4

Relationship to Head% Head, spouse, partner 6.4 2.8 3.4 1.5 1.3 .8% Child 17.5 69.5 60.6 86.1 83.9 93.1% Sibling, sibling-in-law 26.0 10.4 13.0 2.2 2.1 .5% Grandchild .4 1.2 1.0 4.4 1.3 2.6% Aunt, uncle, cousin 19.5 7.3 9.4 2.2 1.7 .6% Other relatives 3.8 1.9 2.3 .9 .6 .2% Other nonrelatives 26.3 7.0 10.3 2.7 9.0 2.1

Number of Parents% Two 10.9 55.5 47.9 61.9 71.8 73.2% One 8.6 16.4 15.1 26.7 13.0 20.7% None 80.5 28.1 37.0 11.4 15.2 6.1

English Proficiency% Speaks English well 16.7 73.6 63.9 97.2 94.4 99.1

Region% Border states 52.1 68.6 65.8 77.5 23.1 14.6% New England .3 .4 .4 .2 7.4 5.7% Mid-Atlantic 4.8 3.4 3.6 .9 21.9 13.5% East North Central 9.9 8.3 8.6 8.2 15.6 19.8% West North Central 2.5 2.4 2.4 2.0 4.6 9.9% South Atlantic 15.0 6.8 8.2 2.8 14.4 16.1% East South Central 2.6 .9 1.2 .5 2.0 6.8% West South Central 2.7 1.1 1.4 1.1 1.6 4.2% Mountain 6.5 4.9 5.2 4.4 3.4 5.1% Pacific 3.6 3.2 3.3 2.4 6.0 4.4

State Compulsory Education% 18 35.4 30.4 31.2 38.3 25.6 32.1% 17 3.9 3.2 3.3 2.0 5.2 12.6% 16 60.7 66.4 65.5 59.7 69.2 55.3

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Unweighted N (1,981) (9,845) (11,826) (24,503) (3,967) (257,492)

Note: All percentages and means are weighted. Never-enrolled non-Hispanic whites are includedwith their ever-enrolled counterparts to simplify the table. Thus, Columns 3 and 5 are comparable.Also, all foreign-born Mexicans were born in Mexico

themselves to a somewhat pessimistic view ofthe long-term prospects of this group—a sub-ject that we return to.

Multivariate Analyses

Up to this point, we have established that (1)a nontrivial share of Mexico-born youths arelikely to have never enrolled in U.S. schools,(2) purging the never enrolled from the for-eign-born segment of the Mexican popula-tion attenuates ethnic and nativity differ-ences in school and work patterns becausethe never-enrolled population inflates esti-mates of the share of foreign-born Mexicanyouths who drop out of U.S. schools, and (3)the never-enrolled segment consists largelyof young men who have been emancipatedfrom their parents. The next two tables morefully examine the implications of these pat-terns for school enrollment and school-workactivities. In Table 4, school enrollment isexamined with logistic regression models forthe total sample of Mexicans and whites,Mexicans born in the United States andMexico, and those born in Mexico. The firsttwo samples provide information on theroles of ethnicity and nativity in schoolenrollment. The Mexico-born sample pro-vides insights into the role of length of resi-dence in the United States. These analyseswere conducted for all youths, regardless ofthe likelihood of their ever having enrolled inhigh school (Panel A), and for youths whoare likely to have enrolled in U.S. highschools (Panel B). All results control for thefull set of predictors.

The first column of Table 4 presents resultsthat are consistent with those in the previoustables. Regardless of how the never enrolledare treated, Mexicans are less likely than arewhites to be enrolled in school. In contrast toforeign-born whites, who are more likely thannative-born whites to be enrolled, the odds ofschool enrollment for foreign-born Mexicansare just one-fourth the odds for native-bornwhites when the never enrolled are includedand four-tenths the odds when the neverenrolled are excluded. Moreover, native-bornMexicans are less likely than are their whitecounterparts to be enrolled in school.

The second column shows that amongMexicans, the foreign born are less likely to beenrolled in school than are the native born.

Inclusion of the never enrolled generates anodds ratio of .47 (Panel A), which changessubstantially to .75 when the never enrolledare excluded (Panel B). Thus, the nature ofthe nativity difference remains the same, butthe strength of the association weakens con-siderably when the never enrolled are exclud-ed.

The last column reveals that conclusionsabout the effect of years of residence in theUnited States are sensitive to how the at-riskpopulation is defined. In Panel A, the oddsratio for years of U.S. residence is 1.08, whichindicates that the likelihood of being enrolledincreases with time in the United States.However, the odds ratio for the samplerestricted to the ever enrolled in Panel B is .96,which indicates that the relationship betweenenrollment and length of residence is nega-tive. Net of controls, the likelihood of enroll-ment declines with years in the United Statesamong those who were born in Mexico.

The latter finding is counterintuitive. Anadditional analysis (not shown) indicates thatin models restricted to the ever enrolled, thenegative relationship between duration of res-idence and school enrollment in the multivari-ate model is due to the inclusion of language.The parameter estimate is positive in bivariatemodels (not shown) and not significant inmultivariate models restricted to all thecovariates except language. Apparently, thenewest ever-enrolled Mexican immigrants arethe least likely to be in school primarilybecause of background factors and theirlower proficiency in English compared to ear-lier immigrants. Once their difficulty withEnglish is controlled, they are actually morelikely to be in school than are those who havelived in the United States longer. Thus, infer-ences are contingent on how the neverenrolled are treated, as well as how modelsare specified.

Panel B also presents the odds ratios for thecovariates, which are of secondary interest.Focusing on Mexicans, the results in the sec-ond and third columns show that enrollmentis less likely for 17 year olds and males. Inaddition, the risks of dropping out are tied totransitions out of the child role. Enrollment ispositively associated with the number of par-ents in the household and being the grand-child of the head. Enrollment is negativelyassociated with being a head, spouse, or part-



Table 4. Odds Ratios from Multivariate Logistic Regressions: School Enrollment

Mexican

Born in theUnited States

Total Sample and Mexico Born in Mexico

Enrolled versus Enrolled versus Enrolled versusNot Enrolled Not Enrolled Not Enrolled

(1) (2) (3)

Panel A: Including Never Enrolled

Years of Residence in the United States 1.08***Ethnicity and Nativity

Foreign-born Mexican .24*** .47*** Native-born Mexican .56*** 1.0Foreign-born white 1.19+ Native-born white (ref.) 1.0

Panel B: Excluding Never Enrolled

Years of Residence in the United States .96***Ethnicity and Nativity

Foreign-born Mexican .39*** .75***Native-born Mexican .54*** 1.0Foreign-born white 1.69***Native-born white (ref.) 1.0

Age17 .57*** .74*** .87+16 (ref.) 1.0 1.0 1.0

Sex Male .85*** .82*** .79**Female (ref.) 1.0 1.0 1.0

Relationship to HeadHead, spouse, partner .21*** .30*** .39***Child (ref) 1.0 1.0 1.0Sibling .70*** 1.00 1.24Grandchild .99 1.53** 1.87+Cousin, aunt, uncle .78* .95 1.21Other relative .36*** .48*** .69Other Nonrelatives .69 .98 1.08

Number of ParentsTwo 3.91*** 4.25*** 4.42***One 1.80*** 2.26*** 2.43***None 1.0 1.0 1.0

English ProficiencyDoes not speak English .61*** .46*** .35***Speaks English 1.0 1.0 1.0

RegionNew England .81*** .56+ .38*Mid-Atlantic .83*** .81 .86East North Central .65*** .58*** .61***

ner or an other relative in the second column.In addition, the results for relationship to thehead of the household must be interpreted inlight of the fact that the number of parents inthe household is controlled. In models that donot include the number of parents, schoolenrollment is negatively associated with addi-tional categories for relationship to the house-hold head. These associations are due to thefact that no parents are present in the house-hold.

Enrollment status is also associated withhuman capital and location. Not speakingEnglish well is a risk factor for school dropout.Furthermore, Mexicans who live outside theborder region in the East North Central, NewEngland, Mountain, and South Atlantic statesare less likely to be enrolled than are theircounterparts in California, Arizona, NewMexico, and Texas, even though Mexicans

who live in states that require education untilage 18 are less likely to be enrolled in schoolthan are those who live in states that requireeducation to age 16 (unlike the relationshipfor the total sample).

Table 5 presents a more detailed analysis ofthe activity patterns of youths by consideringemployment and school enrollment simulta-neously. The multinomial logistic regressionmodels contrast three activity-status groupsto the reference group (enrolled, notemployed): in school and employed, not inschool and employed, and neither in schoolnor employed.13 All odds ratios are generatedfrom multivariate models that include the fullset of covariates for the samples that includethe never enrolled (Columns 1–3) and thesamples that exclude the never enrolled(Columns 4–6).

The results for the total sample shown in


Table 4. Continued

Mexican

Born in theUnited States

Total Sample and Mexico Born in Mexico

Enrolled versus Enrolled versus Enrolled versusNot Enrolled Not Enrolled Not Enrolled

(1) (2) (3)

West North Central .71*** .73+ .82South Atlantic .49*** .55*** .57***East South Central .54*** .66 .74West South Central .55*** .69 1.37Mountain .59*** .43*** .52**Pacific .64*** .81 .85Border states (ref.) 1.0 1.0 1.0

State Compulsory Education18 1.08** .75*** .70***17 1.03 1.10 1.0516 (ref.) 1.0 1.0 1.0

+ p < .10, * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.Note: All parameters were estimated with SUDAAN using weighted data after adjusting the

weights to retain the unweighted sample size for tests of significance. For Panel A, theunweighted Ns are as follows: (1) total sample, N = 297,788; (2) Mexican, N = 36,329; (3) for-eign-born Mexican, N = 11,826. For Panel B, the unweighted Ns are as follows: (1) total sam-ple, N = 295,746; (2) Mexican, N = 34,348; (3) foreign-born Mexican, N = 9,845. Panel Bexcludes both foreign-born Mexicans (N = 1,981) and foreign-born whites (N = 61) who werenot enrolled in school in the United States.

Immigrant Youths Who Never Enroll in U.S. Schools 255Ta

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Panel A indicate that regardless of whether ornot never-enrolled youths are included,Mexicans are more likely than are whites to beidle and more likely to be out of school with ajob. This is especially the case for foreign-bornMexican youths, but it holds for native-bornMexicans as well. Among youths who are inschool, all groups are less likely than arenative-born whites to be employed.

Another important set of findings concernsinterethnic differences. For the majority of com-parisons involving those who were born inMexico, inclusion of the never enrolled ampli-fies differences between Mexicans and whites.In Column 3 of Panel A, the odds of being idleare 3.1 times higher for those born in Mexicothan for the reference group. In Column 6,which excludes the never enrolled, the oddsratio falls to 2.0. In Column 3 of Panel B, theodds ratio of 1.7 indicates that those who wereborn in Mexico are more likely than are theirU.S.-born Mexican counterparts to be idle, butthe odds ratio is close to one (1.1) and non-significant when the never enrolled are exclud-ed (Column 6). A reduction in the odds ratio isalso shown for nativity differences in the likeli-hood of being out of school with a job. Theparameter estimates for employment amongthose who are in school in Columns 1 and 4 arelargely unaffected because purging the sampleof the never enrolled changes the compositiononly of the sample that is not in school.

As in the previous results for school enroll-ment, a more complicated pattern is found foryears of residence in the United States for thoseborn in Mexico (Panel C). When the neverenrolled are included in the analysis (Columns1–3), more time spent in the United States isassociated with a lower likelihood of leavingschool for employment or idleness. This conclu-sion must be modified substantially if thosewho were never enrolled in U.S. schools areexcluded. Among the ever enrolled, time in theUnited States makes adolescents more likely tobe idle or to be out of school with a job. Again,additional analyses suggest that this reversal ofsign is a function of how the model is specified,that is, whether English proficiency is included.

The Never Enrolled and SampleRestrictions in Prior Studies

The foregoing has established that estimates ofschool enrollment and dropout are sensitive to

how never-enrolled youths are treated. By defi-nition, school-based studies exclude never-enrolled youths. Typically, studies that arebased on census data do not consider whetheryouths have ever enrolled in U.S. schools.However, other sample selection criteria thatare used in census-based studies may inadver-tently exclude a substantial share of never-enrolled immigrant adolescents. This point rais-es the question of whether inferences fromprior census-based studies would have beenaffected by explicit decisions about the treat-ment of the never enrolled. Limited inroads intothis issue are possible by comparing our resultsfor all children to the results for a samplerestricted to the children of household heads—a restriction that is common in census-basedstudies that link children to parents (e.g.,Hirschman 2001; Warren 1996). This restrictionis often imposed because parental characteris-tics are generally unavailable for youths who arenot children of the household heads, and suchcharacteristics are often of substantive interest.For the sake of brevity, we address this issueonly for school enrollment.

Additional analyses (not shown) reveal thatexcluding the never enrolled weakens thebivariate relationship between nativity andschool enrollment for samples that arerestricted to children of the heads of house-holds, as was the case for all children. At thesame time, the practice of restricting the sam-ple to children of household heads weakensthe relationship for nativity because it inad-vertently excludes many youths who havenever enrolled in U.S schools. Specifically, thebivariate odds of enrollment for those whowere born in Mexico are less than one-fifth(.17) the odds for U.S.-born Mexicans whenall children are examined and the neverenrolled are included. When just children ofthe heads of households are examined, theodds ratio is .35. This is a substantial differ-ence, as is the difference when the neverenrolled are excluded (.43 for the total sam-ple of children versus .58 for children ofhousehold heads). This finding suggests thatprevious analyses that have focused on chil-dren of the heads of households or childrenliving with their parents may have generatedcorrect inferences about the nature of bivari-ate nativity differences, but underestimatedtheir magnitude if their goal was to describethe total population of immigrant youths.


Last, the bivariate association betweenlength of U.S. residence and school enroll-ment for those who were born in Mexico isalso weakened when the never enrolled areexcluded, regardless of the sample. When allchildren are examined and the never enrolledare included, the bivariate odds ratio is 1.23,compared to 1.05 when the never enrolledare excluded. When only the children of theheads of households are examined and thenever enrolled are included, the odds ratio forduration of residence is 1.17, compared to1.04 when the never enrolled are excluded.14

Overall, sample restrictions based on bothprior enrollment and relationship to thehousehold head matter for inferences.Restricting samples to children of the heads ofhouseholds changes inferences partly becauseit disproportionately excludes children whonever enrolled in U.S. schools. A more com-plete evaluation of this issue will require addi-tional data that can link the never enrolled totheir parents and allow for more fully speci-fied models. Nevertheless, future investiga-tions need to be aware of the implications ofsample selection that is based on either ofthese criteria.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The study of school outcomes amongMexican-origin youths is critical for under-standing the future incorporation of thegrowing Mexican population in the UnitedStates. Mexican-origin youths are at a dispro-portionate risk of dropping out of highschool, and a major question posed in the lit-erature is whether educational outcomesimprove or deteriorate with the duration ofU.S. residence or across generations. Priorresearch on this topic has drawn on data col-lected from both school-based samples andsamples of the general population of youths,often with a lack of clarity about the implica-tions of the type of sample for the conclusionsthat can be drawn. A major question for stud-ies of school outcomes among Mexicans ishow to deal with the substantial segment offoreign-born Mexican youths who neverenrolled in U.S. schools. This segment is omit-ted by design in school-based studies andtypically included in studies of all youths with-

out being separately identified.15 We haveargued that it is crucial to make explicit deci-sions about the treatment of the neverenrolled and that the treatment of the neverenrolled should depend on the research ques-tion at hand.

Using an indirect method to identify never-enrolled youths using information on age atmigration and the likely age at completion ofthe highest grade of education, our analysisindicates that estimates of school enrollmentand school-employment activity patterns of16–17-year-old Mexicans are sensitive to deci-sions about whether to include the neverenrolled because the foreign born make up alarge share of the U.S. Mexican population,and a large share of foreign-born adolescents(perhaps 17 percent for this age group) mayhave already completed their education bythe time of they migrated to the UnitedStates.16 The findings indicate that approxi-mately 86 percent of ever-enrolled Mexico-born youths aged 16–17 are in school, butthis figure drops to 70 percent when thenever enrolled are included. In addition, theshare of Mexico-born youths that is idle near-ly doubles (from 8 percent to 14 percent)when the never enrolled are included in esti-mates. Thus, estimates of the severity of thedropout problem for foreign-born Mexicanyouths are influenced by the treatment of thenever enrolled.

It should be recognized that this methodof identifying the never enrolled is not basedon detailed information gathered directlyfrom individuals on their educational histo-ries. Nonetheless, other evidence attests tothe general validity of this indirect method.Most notably, the never-enrolled segment iscomprised disproportionately of male adoles-cents who have spent a relatively short periodin the United States and have other character-istics that fit the profile of labor migrants(Durand, Massey, and Zenteno 2001; Massey,Durand, and Malone 2002). They are likely tobe emancipated from their parents and livingin poverty in linguistically isolated householdswith siblings, other relatives, and roommates.Mexico-born males who were never enrolledalso have the highest likelihood of any groupof being employed. Their less numerousfemale counterparts are less likely to be work-ing (not shown).

A challenge created by the ascendance of


the assimilation paradigm and the datasources used in empirical research is to deter-mine how assumptions about who belongs inthe at-risk population affect inferences aboutthe nature of differences in outcomes. All the-ories of assimilation draw attention to theduration of time since immigration amongmembers of a particular ethnic group, espe-cially foreign-born members. When the entireethnic group is examined, duration is indicat-ed by nativity and generation. Among the for-eign born, it is indicated by length of resi-dence in the host country. The central tasks ofassimilation theories are to describe trajecto-ries that are anchored to the experiences ofthe immigrant generation and to identify theexplanatory mechanisms for observed trajec-tories. Such mechanisms are revealed throughcomparisons involving the majority popula-tion, the native and foreign-born segments ofa particular group, and individuals with vari-ous durations of residence among the foreignborn. If inferences that are drawn from thesecomparisons are not sensitive to how the at-risk population is defined, then there is littlereason for concern about the issue because ithas few practical implications.

Our results show that some inferences aresensitive to decisions about the treatment ofthe never enrolled and some are not.Conclusions about the nature of interethnicand intraethnic differences by nativity aregenerally not sensitive to such decisions ineither bivariate or multivariate models.Bivariate results indicate that those who wereborn in Mexico have the lowest rates ofschool enrollment and the highest rates ofidleness, followed by U.S.-born Mexicans andnon-Hispanic whites. At the same time, deci-sions about the treatment of the neverenrolled have a substantial effect on the mag-nitude of differences that involve those whowere born in Mexico. Inclusion of the neverenrolled produces substantially larger differ-ences in school enrollment and idlenessacross the groups of interest, compared toexclusion of the never enrolled. Clearly, thedecision to include or exclude the neverenrolled has implications for assessments ofthe severity of nativity differences in schooldropout.

Although the magnitude of estimates ofschool enrollment is contingent on hownever-enrolled Mexican immigrants are treat-

ed, the decision to include or exclude thenever enrolled has its greatest implications forinferences about the effect of the duration ofresidence in the United States. Multivariatemodels that include the never enrolled sug-gest that the likelihood of school enrollmentincreases and the likelihood of idlenessdecreases with years of U.S. residence. Whenthe never enrolled are excluded, these associa-tions reverse direction: School enrollmentdecreases and idleness increases with years ofresidence. Supplementary analyses revealedthat this reversal in sign is due primarily to theeffect of English-language proficiency, whichimplies that the recency of migration has aprotective effect among those who enroll inU.S. schools and overcome language barriers.

This reversal in sign is noteworthy becauseit demonstrates the potential of this proce-dure to reconcile some divergent findingsfrom studies that were based on samples ofthe general population and studies that haverelied on school-based samples. Specifically,exclusion of the never enrolled from samplesof the general population effectively replicatesschool-based samples. This is a major reasonwhy our finding regarding the negative effectof length of residence replicates the findingsof some studies that have relied on school-based samples (White and Glick 2000; seealso Perreira et al.’s 2006 findings for Asians).At the same time, this negative effect is coun-terintuitive. Why might we expect the likeli-hood of enrollment to decrease with exposureto the United States?

One possible answer to this question drawson the notion of immigrant optimism, whichis often invoked to explain academic achieve-ment among foreign-born minorities (Kao2004; Kao and Tienda 1995). The basic idea isthat immigrants are optimistic and deter-mined to take advantage of educationalopportunities in the United States (e.g.,Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995).Once the language barrier is overcome, thisoutlook can provide later-arriving immigrantswith psychological resources to overcomesocioeconomic disadvantages and to stay inhigh school. This explanation assumes thatoptimism and determination fade over timewith duration of residence. An additional pos-sibility is that later-arriving immigrants benefitfrom having been schooled for a longer peri-od in their native language in their country of


origin, which may provide them with the aca-demic skills and knowledge that are necessaryto master course content in U.S. schoolsquickly as they master English (Padilla andGonzalez 2001). Those who had less school-ing in their native country may have less of afoundation to master the basics that are nec-essary to be academically successful in U.S.schools as they learn English. Additionalresearch is needed to evaluate these specula-tive explanations.

Although immigrant optimism may be use-ful for understanding the sign of the coeffi-cient, the dependence of inferences about theeffect of the duration of U.S. residence ondecisions about treatment of the neverenrolled raises larger theoretical issues. Theclassic assimilation view is that incorporationand integration into mainstream institutionsprogressively unfold over time as numerousbarriers that are associated with being a new-comer are overcome. This view would be sup-ported by a positive or a nonsignificant asso-ciation between length of residence andenrollment after covariates measuring differ-ent forms of capital (e.g., English proficiency)are controlled. This association was shown forthe sample that includes the never enrolled.The segmented assimilation perspective sug-gests that exposure to the host society canimpede educational achievement amongimmigrants who belong to ethnic groups thatare generally devalued in the host society.Among Mexico-born youths who ever attend-ed U.S. schools, the likelihood of droppingout and the likelihood of idleness increasewith time in the United States once English-language proficiency is accounted for.Obviously, these different findings raise aconundrum about the relationships amongdata, theories, and research objectives, whichwe delve into in our recommendations.

Because the purview of assimilation theoryis expansive and extends to both the neverenrolled and the ever enrolled, the futureeducational prospects of the large populationof never-enrolled Mexican adolescentsdeserve special attention.17 It is difficult to besanguine about the prospects of these youthsbecause they have few incentives to acquireadditional education, at least over the shortterm, given that their overriding motivationfor migration is to find employment and earnmoney. Consequently, they would face con-

siderable opportunity costs in the form offoregone wages and employment if theyenrolled in a traditional school.

The disincentive of undocumented labormigrants to invest in additional education canalso be linked to the structure of labor mar-kets. Undocumented workers are confinedprimarily to the secondary sector of the labormarket in jobs that offer low wages (byAmerican standards) and few benefits. In thesecondary labor market, undocumentedMexican workers face a wage penalty, andtheir returns to formal education are relative-ly flat (see Duncan et al. 2006; Rivera-Batiz1999; Trejo 1997) because employers in thesecondary labor market are not looking forthe kinds of general skills that are certified bya high school degree. Instead, they are look-ing for specific capital in the form of skills thatare acquired on the job as well as soft skillsthat enable employees to work productivelywith others (Waldinger and Lichter 2003).Thus, the motivation to augment their educa-tion is diminished by the motivation formigration, the role of legal status in constrict-ing opportunities, and employers’ prefer-ences. Needless to say, incentives may changeover a longer time horizon.

The incentive for these youthful migrantsto invest in traditional education, either in theUnited States or in Mexico, is also under-mined by the imperfect transferability of edu-cational credentials across borders (Belmanand Heywood 1991). A high school degreefrom Mexico is devalued in the U.S. labormarket, and additional U.S. schooling withoutobtaining a degree for those who started theireducation elsewhere does not yield an eco-nomic payoff (Gonzalez 2003). Those whostart their education elsewhere and earn a tra-ditional high school degree in the UnitedStates will benefit economically (Bratsbergand Ragan 2002), but the essential fact is thatmost older adolescents who migrate for workand never attend U.S. schools are likely toremain outside the educational system.

In the long term, an option for adolescentswho interrupt their schooling by exiting theformal educational system is to secure a GED.Unfortunately, it is not clear that doing sowould be economically beneficial. Some stud-ies have found that GED recipients are moresimilar in terms of their labor market positionto high school dropouts than to traditional


high school graduates (Cameron andHeckman 1993; Cao, Stromsdorfer, andWeeks 1996; Heckman and LaFontaine 2007).At the same time, other studies have suggest-ed that a GED that is earned in the UnitedStates may confer a slight wage advantageover a secondary degree earned abroad asimmigrants age because it is signals increasedproductivity to employers (Clark and Jaeger2006). Collectively, these results do notencourage optimism about the prospects ofnever-enrolled migrant youths.

Recommendations

In keeping with the general thrust of Vélezand Saenz’s (2001) appeal for greater atten-tion to conceptual and measurement issues inthe study of school dropout, the remainingissue is whether and when investigationsshould identify and exclude the neverenrolled. This issue is important because infer-ences about the level of enrollment and thenature of associations involving key predictorsare sensitive to whether never-enrolled youthsare defined as part of the at-risk population.Thus, a principled set of recommendations isrequired to provide some guidance as to howto reduce coverage error that would resultfrom the failure to include relevant segmentsof the population or the failure to excludeirrelevant segments.18

Decisions about this issue must be made togenerate a sample that accurately reflects thepopulation of interest. The key criterion fordecisions is the fit between the researchobjectives and the type of data that are to beanalyzed. For research that is designed toevaluate hypotheses that are derived fromparticular theoretical perspectives, one mustturn to the scope conditions of the theoreticalperspectives. The scope conditions of theoriesare the domains or boundary conditionsunder which generalizations about a processapply (Stinchcombe 2005; Walker and Cohen1985). The most obvious boundaries arethose that demarcate the groups to whichtheories refer. Policy-oriented research mustalso pay attention to boundary issues to iden-tify the relevant population.

As we noted earlier, assimilation theoriesare prominent in the sociological literature onMexican-origin youths. Because assimilationtheories are broad and inclusive in describing

processes that apply to all group members,the never enrolled should normally be includ-ed along with those who have ever beenenrolled when the research objective is to pro-vide a comprehensive portrait of the totalpopulation of Mexican-origin youths.Moreover, they should normally be identifiedseparately when it is feasible to do so becausenever-enrolled youths differ in importantways from ever-enrolled youths. This cannotbe done in school-based samples, and it hasnot been done in most studies that have usedcensus data.

This recommendation may be taken bysome to imply that it is always inappropriatefor empirical tests of assimilation theories toexclude the never enrolled or to use school-based samples. In turn, this view would implythat it is inappropriate to examine schooldropout from the vantage point of assimila-tion theory because attention is directed awayfrom the total population to the segment thathas ever enrolled in U.S. schools. This positionis untenable. Assimilation theories also focuson immigrants’ experiences with the majorinstitutions of the host society. Indeed, theseminal project in the segmented assimilationtradition is based on tracking the progress ofa longitudinal sample of youths who wereoriginally drawn from a school-based sam-pling frame (Portes and Rumbaut 2001).Thus, exclusion of the never enrolled is notalways problematic for researchers who areconcerned with assimilation processes.

Regardless of whether they are workingwithin an assimilation framework, researcherswhose objective is to focus on various school-related transitions or to assess the perform-ance of U.S. schools for the purpose ofinforming educational policy should endeavorto exclude the never enrolled because thescope of these studies is limited to schools.19

Although this exclusion is accomplished bydesign in surveys that are administered toschool-based samples, it is problematic forstudies that are based on census data or large-scale population-based surveys. Clearly, thenever enrolled should be excluded from theat-risk population to avoid distorting findingsif schools are the focus of attention (seeHeckman and LaFontaine 2007). To do other-wise in census-based studies of transitionsexperienced by those who are enrolled inschools would introduce a form of coverage


error that downwardly biases estimates of thelevel of school enrollment among those whowere born in Mexico and upwardly biasesparameter estimates that summarize differ-ences by nativity.

There is one important qualification to thisrecommendation, especially for those whoare interested in the school-to-work transitionamong Mexican immigrants. For researcherswho use census-based products to examineschool-work activity patterns, the geopoliticalboundaries of the population that is exam-ined are circumscribed by the borders of theUnited States. However, the presence ofnumerous young Mexican labor migrants inthe United States suggests that the scope offuture research could be expanded to includeMexico by using origin-destination designs(e.g., see Landale, Oropesa, and Gorman2000; Oropesa and Landale 2000). This typeof design would allow researchers to describehow the educational transitions that areinvolved in school completion and employ-ment complement binational migration sys-tems. It would permit researchers to bringthose who never enrolled in U.S. schools intoanalyses because they were enrolled inMexican schools (a project that is under way).

In closing, we would be remiss if we didnot answer the question posed in the title ofthis study: Why do never enrolled Mexicanimmigrant youths matter? Never-enrolledMexican youths matter for a variety of rea-sons. From the perspective of sociologicalresearch, the never enrolled matter becausethey have remained in the shadows of priorresearch for reasons that have been madeclear. Relegating them to the shadows isproblematic because the decision to includeor exclude these youths has consequences forinferences. At the same time, never-enrolledadolescents matter because they are hiddenin the shadows of society at large. A substan-tial share of this group may be undocument-ed and stay in the United States in the future,especially if they form families here and immi-gration reforms provide them with the oppor-tunity to regularize their legal status. Their lifechances and those of their children will bestructured not only by how much educationthey receive, but where they obtain their edu-cation. For immigrants, degrees from U.S.educational institutions are likely to conferadvantages, and it is in our long-term nation-

al interest to facilitate the integration ofMexican-origin adolescents into the Americaneducational system. Ultimately, these are thereasons why never-enrolled Mexican immi-grant youths matter.

NOTES

1. Following the National Research Council(2006), we use the terms Mexican andMexican-origin to encompass Mexicans,Mexican Americans, and Chicanos. White refersto non-Hispanic white. Immigrant and foreignborn are used interchangeably, and all for-eign-born Mexicans described here were bornin Mexico. Such practices sacrifice linguisticprecision to avoid cumbersome constructions.These practices should not be seen as aneffort to negate the Americanness of somegroups or to define them out of the main-stream.

2. Status dropouts are those in a given agegroup who are not enrolled in high schooland who have not completed a high schooldiploma or a GED (U.S. Department ofEducation 2006).

3. The former studies have minimized allu-sions to theory and assimilation per se.Instead, these de facto analyses of assimilationhave stuck close to the data and may havealluded to adaptation or incorporation.

4. It should be noted that this finding isgenerally consistent with those from longitu-dinal population-based surveys, such as theNational Longitudinal Survey of Youth andthe Panel Study of Income Dynamics, that areless relevant here because they are notrestricted to youths, follow respondents wellinto adulthood, or focus solely on adults.

5. Our research is different in at least threeimportant ways from that of Fry (2003,2005). First, we provide an in-depth portraitof the Mexican-origin population, rather thana general descriptive overview of panethnicgroups (e.g., Latinos) and nativity groups thatare disassociated from ethnicity (e.g., the for-eign born). Second, we explicitly recognizeand demonstrate the extent of uncertainty inidentifying the never-enrolled populationbecause of numerous assumptions. Third, weshow how bivariate and multivariate infer-ences about key indicators of exposure and


assimilation for the Mexican-origin popula-tion are contingent on how the never enrolledare treated. Thus, the research goals of thisstudy complement and significantly extendthose of prior studies.

6. The institutionalized also cannot beincluded in the analysis of school-work activi-ty patterns because they are not at risk ofemployment and are classified as not in thelabor force by the U.S. census. Also, those inother group settings may be under some formof supervision or may have some type of men-tal or physical incapacity.

7. Because the census does not ask forparental birthplace, a measure of generationcan be constructed only by linking records ofchildren to records of their coresident parents(identified by codes for relationship to head).Although this may be a viable strategy foridentifying the second and third generationsfor the majority of children, there are blindspots for children who do not live with theirparents, children who live with single parents(e.g., a child with a single native-born parentand an absent foreign-born parent may bemisclassified as third+ generation), and chil-dren in blended families. The first blind spotmay be especially important for youngmigrants who were never enrolled. This is onereason why we focused on nativity differ-ences, rather than on generational differ-ences.

8. Age at migration can be calculated fromthe census as age at census – [2000census year –year of migration].

9. Misclassifications may occur in theabsence of information on specific dates andplaces of enrollment. This method will cor-rectly classify those who delayed entry intoschool or experienced grade retention inMexico. A few false negatives (incorrectly clas-sifying someone as never enrolled in the U.S.)may occur for those who enrolled in theUnited States during their year of migrationbut dropped out after completing that year inthis country. A few false positives (incorrectlycounting someone as ever enrolled in theU.S.) may occur as well for any student whoskipped a grade in Mexico, but did not enrollin the United States.

10. The census uses grouped categories(intervals) before the 9th grade and singleyears for Grades 9–12 to describe completededucation. Among the grouped categories

are 5th or 6th grade and 7th or 8th grade.The low assumption is that the typical personin these intervals completed 5 and 7 years ofschooling (respectively). The midpointassumption is that the typical person in theseintervals completed 5.5 and 7.5 years. Thehigh assumption is that the typical person ineach category completed the 6th and 8thgrades.

11. Article 65(I) of the current GeneralEducation Law of Mexico stipulates that theminimum age of entry into the first grade is 6(by December 31 of the school year). Somesources have described Mexican federal law asmandating compulsory education from ages6 to 14 (International Labour Office 1998),and others have described compulsory educa-tion through the ninth grade (the last level ofsecundaria; see Post 2001; U.S. Departmentof State 2007). Regarding the age of entryinto school, our calculations using public usedata from the Mexican census indicate thatthe majority of children in Mexico enter thefirst grade at age 6. Regarding the age of exitfrom schools, many Mexicans in the past exit-ed the educational system upon the comple-tion of the sixth grade, and about two-thirdsof children who enter the first grade inMexico currently complete nine years of edu-cation (U.S. Department of State 2007). Thus,a case could be made for using the high esti-mate instead of the middle estimate for col-lapsed categories in the U.S. census, but theresults are not sensitive to this decision.

12. The difference between the fact that18 percent are children of heads of house-holds and 19.5 percent live with at least oneparent is due to the fact that some childrenlive with a parent in a subfamily that is head-ed by someone other than a parent.

13. Because of a change in the referencecategory, a shift in perspective is required toread this table. Table 4 answers the question:What predicts school enrollment? Table 5answers the question: What predicts varioustypes of employment-related departures fromthe modal (majority) pattern of enrollmentwithout working? This difference should bekept in mind in interpreting the parameterestimates and comparing results in these twotables.

14. Multivariate analyses were also con-ducted with identically specified models forthe total sample and a sample of children of


the heads of households (relationship to thehousehold head was dropped because it is aconstant in samples that are restricted to chil-dren of household heads). The significantnegative parameter estimate for length of res-idence in the multivariate models for allMexico-born youths who were ever enrolledin U.S. schools was not replicated for an ever-enrolled sample of children of householdheads. The odds ratio for the latter groupweakened considerably and was nonsignifi-cant (odds ratio = .99, p =.35).

15. As we noted earlier, analyses that arelimited to the children of heads of householdsmay inadvertently omit many never-enrolledyouths.

16. One important question is how theunderenumeration of undocumented migrantsmay have affected our results. Although thereare no estimates of the undercount for undoc-umented Mexicans for the 2000 census, theundercount for Hispanics overall is estimated tobe about 2.85 percent (U.S. Census Bureau2001). The undercount is likely to be higher forundocumented migrants. The implication forour results is that our estimate of 17 percentnever enrolled among Mexican foreign-bornyouths may be conservative.

17. To some extent, this is not an issue fortemporary migrants who return to Mexicoafter a short stay. Yet, many will become per-manent migrants for several reasons, includ-ing the decision to have children in the UnitedStates, the difficulty of moving back and forthbetween countries because of increased gov-ernmental efforts to restrict the flow of peopleacross the U.S.-Mexico border, and higherwages in the United States. The migration offamily members from Mexico to the UnitedStates also discourages return migration(Ibarraran and Lubotsky 2005; McKenzie andRapoport 2006; Mora and Taylor 2006).

18. Coverage error is normally discussed interms of sampling procedures. The concept ofcoverage error is extended here to refer to theextent to which analytic samples exclusivelyand completely capture members of the pop-ulation.

19. These would include studies of theschool-to-work transition, the transition fromone grade to another, and the transition fromone level of school to another (e.g., college).

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R. S. Oropesa, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Demography, Department of Sociology, ThePennsylvania State University. His main field of interest is demography, specializing in migration-related processes and outcomes among Latinos. His current work focuses on various dimensions ofimmigrants’ experiences in a new destination, as well as the role of immigration in the health andeducation of children in both sending and receiving societies.

Nancy S. Landale, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Demography and Director of the PopulationResearch Institute, The Pennsylvania State University. Her main fields of interest are family demog-raphy, immigrant assimilation, the Hispanic population, and children’s health. Dr. Landale is cur-rently working on projects that focus on the educational and health outcomes of Mexican childrenof immigrants as well as on a study of academic achievement among children of legal immigrants.

The authors appreciate the able research assistance of Martin Moreno. Infrastructural support wasprovided by the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University. Address corre-spondence to R. S. Oropesa, Department of Sociology,The Pennsylvania State University, 201Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16803; e-mail: [email protected].


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