Parents' socioeconomic status and children's academic ... - Nova

Descriptive statistics
As used here, the term ‘cultural background’ refers to whether the children
are immigrants, native Norwegians, or have one native Norwegian and one
immigrant parent. Similar studies, (such as Platt 2005 b; 2005a; 2005c),
have shown that the association between immigrant status and socioeconomic
status varies according to country of origin. However, in view of
the small sample size, I group pupils into four groups. The grouping is based
on the parents’ registered immigrant status and region of origin. With regard
to immigrant status, we distinguish between children with both parents born
in Norway (no immigrant status, “native Norwegians”), children with one
Norwegian-born parent and one parent born abroad (mixed status), and
children with two parents born abroad (immigrant families). The latter
category – immigrant families – is further divided into two sub-groups:
western immigrants (originating from Europe, North America and Oceania),
and non-western immigrants (originating from Asia, Africa and Latin
America). It might be interesting to subdivide the mixed category by the
foreign-born parents’ region of origin as well, but due to the small sample
size, we have opted not to do this.
Fifty-nine per cent of the pupils in the case sample (see figure 5) are
native Norwegians (NN), 15 per cent are western immigrants (WI), 18 per
cent are non-western immigrants (NWI) and 8 per cent have one native
Norwegian and one foreign-born parent (MIX). While 89 per cent of the
control group are native Norwegians, 4 per cent are western immigrants, one
is a non-western immigrant and six are MIX. Due to the relative cultural
homogeneity of the control group, it will not be considered in this section.
– Parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s academic performance – 35