Educational inequality among white and Mexican-origin adolescents in the American southwest: 1990

Adolescents of Mexican origin complete fewer years of schooling than do non-Hispanic White adolescents. Researchers rt ho have focused on such factors as family background, English-language ability and migration history as explanations for this finding have often neglected the relationships among these factors. Using data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples, this analysis integrates several explanations for the educationally disadvantaged position of Mexican-origin adolescents. Although family-background factors account best for ethnic-group differences in adolescents' success in school, English-language ability and migration history are also associated with adolescents' schooling outcomes. However, English-language ability and migration history do relatively little to explain the gap in schooling outcomes between Mexican-origin and non-Hispanic White adolescents. Finally even after all these factors are taken into account, adolescents of Mexican origin are still at an educational disadvantage relative to non-Hispanic White adolescents in the final years of high school.