Education of Mexican youth and their assimilation by socioeconomic segment in the United States

Alejandro Roman, El Colegio de México

The achievements in school of migrants and their descendents in United States are an indicator that permits to know if migrants and their children are assimilating to the new society. It means, if they have similar education to the natives, they are assimilating. The segmented assimilation theory pointed out that the assimilation of migrants and their descendents will be different among socioeconomic segments. Our objective in this paper is to analyze the segmented assimilation for the different generations of Mexican youth in United States through their educational achievements. The source of data is the Current Population Survey 2003, with this source we are going to study the educational differences among Mexican and natives through dissimilarity index. We will emphasize the influence of several elements on educational achievements with a logistic model. The main finding is, the second and third generations are having more assimilation than others.