The Long-Run Impact of Immigrant Classmates on Educational Outcomes in Egalitarian Norway

Are Skeie Hermansen, University of Oslo
Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, University of Oslo

Despite a growing empirical literature on the relationship between immigrant concentration in schools and student achievement, few studies address longer-run outcomes. Using Norwegian registry data, this study addresses the causal impact of immigrant classmates on educational attainment in young adulthood within six entire student cohorts in their final 10th grade of compulsory education (310,742 students, 751 schools). Controlling for school fixed-effects, native SES composition, and observed background characteristics of students, we find that students in cohorts with more immigrant peers within the same school have slightly higher propensities to complete upper secondary education by their early twenties. These effects are stronger among students from immigrant families compared to students with native-born parents. Our findings indicate that lower educational attainment among students in schools with high immigrant concentrations do not reflect direct negative effects of immigrant classmates, but rather student sorting and unobserved stable characteristics of schools with varying immigrant densities.