Ethnic Capital and STEM Participation: The Impact of Ethnic Group Characteristics (2014)
Undergraduate: Francis Wong
Faculty Advisor: David Guilkey
Department: Economics
Most of the economic and sociological literature on the outcomes of children of immigrants uses income or years of education to measure the extent to which human capital is transferred from parent to child. This paper examines the role of parent human capital and levels of ethnic community human capital in predicting participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This paper finds that parent human capital strongly predicts child participation in these fields. Ethnic community characteristics produce a weaker effect, but their effects are mitigated when controlling for neighborhood and source country characteristics.