6 Conclusion

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Our analysis of the degree and nature of intergenerational education mobility among the Canadian-born children of immigrants sheds light on three related issues within the scope of this topic. First, we find that the elasticity between parent and child years of schooling is rather loose among immigrants and their children, and indeed much looser than it is for the Canadian-born children of Canadian-born parents; second, that money has little to do with this intergenerational tie, indeed, if anything, lower earning immigrant parents have more educated children; and finally, that the strength of the tie between parent and child years of schooling has not changed across the birth cohorts of the post-war era. All of this also plays out in a context in which immigrants and their children have, on average, more years of schooling than Canadians who have been in the country for more than two generations. At the same time, it should be stressed that our analysis cannot and is not intended to uncover or outline the reasons for these patterns.

We also underscore the fact that our descriptive results are global, referring to societal averages, and offer an overall view with respect to the schooling of children and children of immigrants. Nevertheless, some interesting stories of a more detailed nature come out of the data. We highlight the fact that some children from some communities have higher than average education but lower than average earnings as adults, a pattern that echoes the situation faced by their parents. This applies to the sons of immigrants from a small number of countries, particularly the Caribbean and West Africa. This is similar to the major messages in Reitz and Banerjee (2007). Though these groups represent a small fraction of the total population it is important to also understand the nature of the intergenerational process underlying their outcomes, and this can likely be more fruitfully studied by detailed analyses specific to these communities.

Finally, it should be noted that by its very nature our analysis is historical, referring to cohorts of immigrants who arrived in the country some decades in the past, and whose children attended schools in the past. In spite of our examination of past cohorts of immigrants and their children and the suggestion that there is some continuity in the intergenerational process between the most recent and most distant cohorts of the post-war period, unclear is the extent to which the patterns we uncover, and the particular groups we highlight, can be extrapolated into the future.