Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T02:06:08.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE COGNITIVE COMPETENCES OF IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE STUDENTS ACROSS THE WORLD: AN ANALYSIS OF GAPS, POSSIBLE CAUSES AND IMPACT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

HEINER RINDERMANN  and
JAMES THOMPSON
HEINER RINDERMANN*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany
JAMES THOMPSON
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University College London, UK
*
1Corresponding author. Email: heiner.rindermann@psychologie.tu-chemnitz.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Immigration, immigration policies and education of immigrants alter competence levels. This study analysed their effects using PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS data (1995 to 2012, N=93 nations) for natives' and immigrants' competences, competence gaps and their population proportions. The mean gap is equivalent to 4.71 IQ points. There are large differences across countries in these gaps ranging from around +12 to −10 IQ points. Migrants' proportions grow roughly 4% per decade. The largest immigrant-based ‘brain gains’ are observed for Arabian oil-based economies, and the largest ‘brain losses’ for Central Europe. Regarding causes of native–immigrant gaps, language problems do not seem to explain them. However, English-speaking countries show an advantage. Acculturation within one generation and intermarriage usually reduce native–immigrant gaps (≅1 IQ point). National educational quality reduces gaps, especially school enrolment at a young age, the use of tests and school autonomy. A one standard deviation increase in school quality represents a closing of around 1 IQ point in the native–immigrant gap. A new Greenwich IQ estimation based on UK natives' cognitive ability mean is recommended. An analysis of the first adult OECD study PIAAC revealed that larger proportions of immigrants among adults reduce average competence levels and positive Flynn effects. The effects on economic development and suggestions for immigration and educational policy are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 66 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Becker, R. & Schubert, F. (2011) Die Rolle von primären und sekundären Herkunftseffekten für Bildungschancen von Migranten im deutschen Schulsystem. [] In Becker, R. (ed.) Integration durch Bildung []. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, pp. 161–194.Google Scholar
Bozorgmehr, M. & Sabagh, G. (1988) High status immigrants: a statistical profile of Iranians in the United States. Iranian Studies 21, 5–36.Google Scholar
Carabaña, J. (2011) Why do the results of immigrant students depend so much on their country of origin and so little on their country of destination? In Pereyra, M. A., Kotthoff, H-G. & Cowen, R. (eds) PISA under examination. Changing Knowledge, Changing Tests, and Changing Schools. Sense, Rotterdam, pp. 207–221.Google Scholar
Coleman, D. (2006) Immigration and ethnic change in low-fertility countries: a third demographic transition. Population and Development Review 32, 401–446.Google Scholar
Coleman, D. (2010) Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the United Kingdom 2006–2056. Population and Development Review 36, 441–486.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deutsche Bundesregierung (2009) Drucksache 16/12005. Rechtsextreme Tötungsdelikte seit 1990. [.] URL: http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/141/1614122.pdf (accessed April 12, 2012).Google Scholar
Dronkers, J., Velden, R. V. D. & Dunne, A. (2012) Why are migrant students better off in certain types of educational systems or schools than in others? European Educational Research Journal 11, 11–44.Google Scholar
Easterly, W. & Levine, R. (1997) Africa‘s growth tragedy: policies and ethnic divisions. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 1203–1250.Google Scholar
Ellis, L., Beaver, K. & Wright, J. (2009) Handbook of Crime Correlates. Academic Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Farron, S. (2010) The Affirmative Action Hoax. New Century Books, Quezon City.Google Scholar
Goldin, I., Cameron, G. & Balarajan, M. (2012) Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future. Princeton University Press, Princeton.Google Scholar
Hanushek, E. A., Peterson, P. E. & Woessmann, L. (2013) Endangering Prosperity. Brookings, Washington.Google Scholar
Hanushek, E. A. & Woessmann, L. (2011) The economics of international differences in educational achievement. In Hanushek, E. A., Machin, S. & Woessmann, L. (eds) Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume III. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 89–200.Google Scholar
Hoppe, H.-H. (2001) Democracy: The God That Failed. Transaction Publishers, Rutgers, NJ.Google Scholar
Hunt, E. (1995) Will We Be Smart Enough? A Cognitive Analysis of the Coming Workforce. Russell Sage Foundation, New York.Google Scholar
Hunt, E. (2012) What makes nations intelligent? Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, 284–306.Google Scholar
International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2011) World Migration Report 2011. IOM/Courand et Associés, Geneva.Google Scholar
Jones, G. (2011) National IQ and national productivity: the hive mind across Asia. Asian Development Review 28(1), 51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, L. M. (2004) Immigration, skills and the labor market: international evidence. Journal of Population Economics 17, 501–534.Google Scholar
Kapur, D. & McHale, J. (2005) Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and its Impact on the Developing World. Center for Global Development, Washington.Google Scholar
Karabel, J. (2005) The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.Google Scholar
Kirkegaard, E. O. W. (2013) Predicting immigrant IQ from their countries of origin, and Lynn's national IQs: a case study from Denmark. Mankind Quarterly LIV, 151–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkegaard, E. O. W. (2014). Criminality among Norwegian immigrant populations. Open Differential Psychology. URL: http://openpsych.net/ODP/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/criminality_norway-final.pdf (accessed 19th June 2014).Google Scholar
Land Berlin (2010) Gesetz zur Regelung von Partizipation und Integration in Berlin. [.] URL: www.berlin.de/imperia/md/content/lb-integration-migration/publikationen/recht/partintg_bf.pdf?start&ts=1318346642&file=partintg_bf.pdf (accessed 25th May 2012).Google Scholar
Levels, M., Dronkers, J. & Kraaykamp, G. (2008) Immigrant children's educational achievement in Western countries. American Sociological Review 73, 835–853.Google Scholar
Lott, J. R. (2000) Does a helping hand put others at risk? Affirmative action, police departments, and crime. Economic Inquiry 38, 239–277.Google Scholar
McWhorter, J. (2000) Losing the Race. Self-Sabotage in Black America. Free Press, New York.Google Scholar
Meisenberg, G. (2012) National IQ and economic outcomes. Personality and Individual Differences 53, 103–107.Google Scholar
Moser, P., Voena, A. & Waldinger, F. (2014) German Jewish émigrés and US invention. American Economic Review 104, 3222–3255.Google Scholar
Müller-Jentsch, D. (ed.) (2008) Die Neue Zuwanderung: Die Schweiz zwischen Brain-Gain und Überfremdungsangst. Verlag Neue Züricher Zeitung, Zürich.Google Scholar
Nyborg, H. (2012) The decay of Western civilization: double relaxed Darwinian selection. Personality and Individual Differences 53, 118–125.Google Scholar
OECD (2006) Where Immigrant Students Succeed. OECD, Paris.Google Scholar
OECD (2010) PISA 2009 Results (Volume II). OECD, Paris.Google Scholar
OECD (2014) PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving: Students' Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems, Volume V. OECD, Paris.Google Scholar
Piffer, D. (2013a) Correlation of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism with latitude and a hunter–gather lifestyle suggests culture–gene coevolution and selective pressure on cognition genes due to climate. Anthropological Science 121, 161–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piffer, D. (2013b) Factor analysis of population allele frequencies as a simple, novel method of detecting signals of recent polygenic selection: the example of educational attainment and IQ. Mankind Quarterly LIV, 168–100.Google Scholar
Putnam, R. D. (2007) E pluribus unum: diversity and community in the twenty-first century. Scandinavian Political Studies 30, 137–174.Google Scholar
Rector, R. & Richwine, J. (2013) The fiscal cost of unlawful immigrants and amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer. Washington: Heritage Foundation, Special Report from the Domestic Policy Studies Department. No. 133, 6th May 2013 .Google Scholar
Richwine, J. (2009) IQ and immigration policy. Dissertation, Harvard University, Boston.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. (2011) Intelligenzwachstum in Kindheit und Jugend. [.] Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht 58, 210–224.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. (2012) Intellectual classes, technological progress and economic development: the rise of cognitive capitalism. Personality and Individual Differences 53, 108–113.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H., Baumeister, A. E. E. & Gröper, A. (2014) Cognitive abilities of Emirati and German engineering university students. Journal of Biosocial Science 46, 199–213.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. & Ceci, S. J. (2009) Educational policy and country outcomes in international cognitive competence studies. Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, 551–577.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H., Flores-Mendoza, C. & Mansur-Alves, M. (2010) Reciprocal effects between fluid and crystallized intelligence and their dependence on parents' socioeconomic status and education. Learning and Individual Differences 20, 544–548.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H., Flores-Mendoza, C. & Woodley, M. A. (2012a) Political orientations, intelligence and education. Intelligence 40, 217–225.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. & Thompson, J. (2011) Cognitive capitalism: the effect of cognitive ability on wealth, as mediated through scientific achievement and economic freedom. Psychological Science 22, 754–763.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. & Thompson, J. (2013) Ability rise in NAEP and narrowing ethnic gaps? Intelligence 41, 821–831.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H., Woodley, M. A. & Stratford, J. (2012b) Haplogroups as evolutionary markers of cognitive ability. Intelligence 40, 362–375.Google Scholar
Scarr, S. & McCartney, K. (1983) How people make their own environments: a theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development 54, 424–435.Google Scholar
Schnepf, S. V. (2007) Immigrants' educational disadvantage: an examination across ten countries and three surveys. Journal of Population Economics 20, 527–545.Google Scholar
Shavit, Y. (1990) Segregation, tracking and the educational attainment of minorities: Arabs and Oriental Jews in Israel. American Sociological Review 55, 115–126.Google Scholar
Sowell, Th. (1993) Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas. Free Press, New York.Google Scholar
Sowell, Th. (2004) Affirmative Action Around the World. Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
te Nijenhuis, J., de Jong, M-J., Evers, A. & van der Flier, H. (2004) Are cognitive differences between immigrant and majority groups diminishing? European Journal of Personality 18, 405–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiedemann, J. & Billmann-Mahecha, E. (2007) The influence of ethnic criteria and frame of reference effects on teachers' recommendations in regard to transition from primary to secondary education. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 10, 108–120.Google Scholar
UNDP (2010) Human Development Report 2010. United Nations, New York.Google Scholar
Wadhwa, V. (2012) Why America is Losing The Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent. Wharton, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Wax, A. L. (2012) The dead end of ‘disparate impact’. National Affairs 12, 53–69.Google Scholar