Jaap Dronkers

Maastricht University | UM · Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market

Objective To analyze the relationships between parental separation and partnership formation patterns across 16 countries and over time, and how the relationships are shaped by contextual factors. Background Several studies have found that parental separation predicts higher rates of cohabitation and lower rates of marriage. Few studies have analy...

We take a first step toward unravelling the mechanisms behind the negative influence of single parenthood and the proportion of single-parent families on school performance, using 2012 international Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. We find that individual truancy of pupils fully explains the relationship between living in a...

For foreign-born residents and their children, attaining citizenship in the host country confers membership, rights and participation opportunities, and encourages a sense of belonging (Bloemraad 2006). From a destination country perspective, naturalisation is increasingly seen as an important part of the process of integrating immigrants. In order...

Using new direct measures of numeracy and literacy skills among 85,875 adults in 17 Western countries, we find that foreign-born adults have lower mean skills than native-born adults of the same age (16 to 64) in all of the examined countries. The gaps are small, and vary substantially between countries. Multilevel models reveal that immigrant popu...

This article analyses perceived in-group discrimination of 29,189 first and second generation immigrant respondents from 201 different countries of origin currently living in one of 27 EU countries. In addition to testing effects of individual factors, the article estimates the effects of macro-characteristics of both origin and destination countri...

Recent research has shown profound impacts of institutional settings of education systems on educational inequalities, i.e. systematic disadvantages and advantages in education being structured by characteristics like class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and their intersections. The main education system characteristics which have been identified...

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how educational systems impact on academic performance in secondary schools by studying the impact of tracking on achievement in secondary education in Germany. We exploit federal heterogeneity in the 16 German states’ educational systems by classifying them into three tracking regimes. Using recent,...

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how educational systems impact on academic performance in secondary schools by studying the impact of tracking on achievement in secondary education in Germany. We exploit federal heterogeneity in the 16 German states’ educational systems by classifying them into three tracking regimes. Using recent,...

This article examines the effect of the ethnic composition on school performances in secondary education for Turkish students, using both cross-national and Swiss national PISA 2009 data. At school level our results show no effect of the proportion of natives or the proportion of coethnics and a negative association between ethnic diversity (we emp...

Summary Who profits of selection into secondary education tracks? A new approach to an old question [1]Recently Dunne (2010) and Dronkers, van der Velden & Dunne (2011) introduced a three-level model: countries, schools, and students to analyze effects of educational systems. They showed that school characteristics like socioeconomic composition se...

According to Robert Putnam (2007) ethnic diversity in cities and neighborhoods does not lead to an increase of trust and social capital as previously predicted by intergroup contact theory (Pettigrew, 1998); instead it triggers a reaction of hunkering down that leads to a decrease in trust and social capital of both in-group and out-groups. But wha...

In this paper, we attempt to explain the differences between reading and math scores of migrants’ children (8430 daughters and 8526 sons) in 17 OECD destination countries, coming from 45 origin countries or regions, using PISA 2009 data. In addition to the societal gender equality levels of the origin and destination countries (the gender empowerme...

Electoral participation of immigrants is an important issue in Europe, particularly because immigrants vote less often than natives. This may suggest a lack of political integration and might result in proportionally lower representation in parliament, in turn affecting democratic legitimacy. This research analyses 8,132 immigrants in 24 European c...

The main research question of this paper is the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old migrant students. We focus specifically on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores and the extent to which th...

All European states have a primary obligation to establish and maintain governmental schools everywhere, but as the result of political struggle and constitutional guarantees, they have also allowed and often financed non-state schools based on special pedagogical, religious or philosophical ideas. Depending on the level of state grants for non-sta...

Living in a single-parent family is negatively related with children’s educational performance compared to living with 2 biological parents. In this article, we aim to find out to what extent the context of the school’s share of single-parent families affects this negative relationship. We use pooled data from the Organisation for Economic Co-opera...

Tracked educational systems are associated with greater social inequality in children's educational achievement. Until now, research has assumed that the impact of tracking on the inequality of educational opportunity is independent of other educational institutional features. Using data from the 2009 PISA survey, we study how central examinations...

In this paper, we analyse the gender differences between the educational performance of 15-year-old children of migrants from specific regions of origin countries living in different destination countries with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 wave. We study whether this gender difference of migrant pupils deviates from...

This paper empirically tests diverse theoretical explanations for observed skills disparities between adult immigrants and non-immigrants. Using skills data from 100,000 adults (16-65) in 18 Western countries, we show that in almost all countries, adult immigrants are less numerically skilled than non-immigrants, but that the size of the skills gap...

Electoral participation of immigrants is an important issue in Europe, particularly because immigrants vote less often than natives. This may suggest a lack of political integration and might result in proportionally lower representation in parliament, in turn a�ecting democratic legitimacy. This research analyses 8,132 immigrants in 24 European co...

Background Earlier studies using a double perspective (destination & origin) indicate that several macro-characteristics of both destination and origin countries affect the educational performance of migrant children. This paper explores the extent to which educational system features of destination and origin countries can explain these difference...

In this chapter, we will estimate the effects on language skills of two characteristics of school populations: average/share and diversity, on both the ethnic and the sociocultural dimensions. We will use the cross-national Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data for native students and students with an immigrant background, i...

Why do some immigrants naturalize and others not? While much of the literature emphasizes the importance of country of origin features and individual characteristics, there is surprisingly little systematic research on the relation between citizenship policies in destination countries and citizenship take‐up among immigrants. Most research in this...

This article examines the effect of the ethnic composition in the school class on school performance in primary education, using COOL 2008 data for The Netherlands. We make an important distinction between the proportion of migrant children and the diversity with regard to the different ethnic groups in a school class. Due to the strong correlation...

Chapter 1 has pointed to the changing role of education in schooling across Europe. There are two levels at which religion can impact on education practices: at the macro level, by impinging on the way the educational system is organized, and at the micro level, in terms of the types of schools parents choose for their children. At the macro level,...

This paper aims to explain the high scores of 15-year-old native pupils in the Netherlands andFlanders by comparing them with the scores of pupils in countries with the same highly stratifiededucational system. Therefore, we compare only the educational performance of 15-year-old pupilsfrom the following regions: the Netherlands, Flanders, Wallonia...

In Europe, a variety of national policies regulate access to citizenship. This article analyses how citizenship policies affect naturalization rates among immigrants. Our analysis confirms that favourable citizenship policies positively affect naturalization rates, especially among first-generation immigrants with more than 5 but fewer than 20 year...

This papers deals with the question whether the difference in educational per¬ formance of pupils from two or single-mother families changes in relation with the increase of the percentage single-mother families in countries. Based upon information about 15-year old pupils in 25 countries in the PISA survey of 2000, 2003 and 2009, we conclude that...

Despite the large literature on the long-term effects of parental divorce, few studies have analyzed the effects of parental divorce on spouse selection behavior. However, the characteristics of one's spouse can have important effects on economic well-being and on marital success. We use discrete-time, event-history data from Finnish population reg...

The main research question of this article is concerned with the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old migrant students. The authors focus specifically on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores...

Public funding of private schools has often been opposed on the grounds that it would disproportionately favour the (higher) middle classes. Using a pooled dataset based on the 2000, 2003 and 2006 waves of the PISA study, we test this hypothesis separately for private dependent (i.e. publicly funded) and private independent (privately funded) schoo...

As a follow-up of earlier analyses of the educational performance of all pupils with amigration background with Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)waves 2003 and 2006, we analyze the differences between the educational performanceof 15-year old daughters and sons of migrants from specific regions of origin countriesliving in diffe...

Using Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] 2006 data, we examine the science performance of 9.279 15-year-old children of immigrants, originating from 35 different countries, living in 16 Western countries of destination. Whereas former research has mainly paid attention to the influence of individual-level characteristics on the edu...

This paper studies the scientific literacy of immigrant children in a cross-classified multilevel framework. Using data from the 2006 PISA survey, features of immigrant children's countries of origin, countries of destination, and communities (the specific origin-destination combination) are taken into account in order to explain macro-level differ...

This paper explores the extent to which educational system features of destination and origin countries can explain differences in immigrant children's educational achievement. Using data from the 2006 PISA survey, we performed cross- classified multilevel analysis on the science performance of 9.279 15-year-old immigrant children, originating from...

The main research question of this article is concerned with the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school composition, track level, and country of origin on the educational achievement of 15-year-old migrant students. The authors focus specifically on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores...

Several studies conclude that ethnic diversity tends to reduce social capital. There may, however, be other forms of diversity that also affect social capital, and their inclusion might make the negative effect of ethnic diversity spurious. Besides ethnic diversity, we identify economic and religious diversity, as well as language proficiency in th...

Denominational schooling makes up an important part of European educational systems. Given its specificity, denominational schooling can be expected to place a greater weight on values teaching and moral education. It also may be more successful in creating a warm and caring atmosphere, thus helping students to better emotionally connect to the sch...

The effects of educational systems, school-composition, track-level, parental background and immigrants' origins on the achievement of 15-years old native and immigrant students. A reanalysis of PISA 2006 The main research question of this paper is the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school-composition and track-level on...

This chapter examines the economic integration of first-and second-generation immigrants into thirteen countries in Europe, considering several possible determinants of successful integration, including the immigrant's own education and the education of the immigrant's parents. In general, both the immigrant's own educational attainment and the imm...

Citizenship acquisition is often seen as a crucial step in the process of integrating immigrants in host societies. This paper analyzes the question why some immigrants are more likely to have acquired destination country citizenship across European states than others and tests legal-formal, socioeconomic, cultural and micro-level explanations. We...

We apply propensity score matching to the estimation of the disparity in school effectiveness between the privately owned, privately funded school sector and the public one in a sample of 25 countries in Europe, America and Asia. This technique allows us to distinguish between school choice and school effectiveness processes and thus, to account fo...

Using PISA 2006 data, we analyze the science performance of 9279 15-year-old immigrant children, originating from 35 different countries, living in 16 Western countries of destination. Whereas former research has mainly paid attention to the influence of individual-level characteristics on the educational performance of immigrants, this study’s foc...

This article presents a multilevel analysis of I 363 male and female first- and second-generation immigrants' unemployment rates. In addition to individual characteristics, the effects of macro-characteristics of I 3 destination countries in the EU and of more than 100 origin countries of the immigrants are analysed. Immigrants are found to be more...

It is primarily the emergence of new state policies promoting market mechanisms in the field of education that has encouraged research on education markets (Maroy, 2006). In the 1980s, conservative American and British governments, drawing on theories of public choice (Chubb & Moe, 1998), encouraged reforms aimed at reducing the alleged inefficiency a...

We apply propensity score matching to the estimation of differential school effectiveness between the publicly funded private sector and the public sector in a sample of 26 countries. This technique allows us to distinguish between school choice and school effectiveness processes and thus to account for selectivity issues involved in the comparison...

This book is one of the products of the European Forum organized by the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence (Italy) in the academic year 2006/2007. The aim of this EuropeanForum was to explore primarily not only the PISA data sets, but also other relevant cross-national data sets (TIMSS, Europ...

In this paper we analyze the attitudes of 14 year old children of first and second generation immigrants and their civic attitudes about (aspects of) the society of destination. We use data from the Civic Education Study conducted by International Educational Association (IAE) in 1999. This Civic Education Study tests civic knowledge, civic attitud...

Drawing on the second wave of the European Social Survey, we analyse the educational attainment of 1,039 second generation immigrants from different countries of origin in 13 EU countries, relative to that of the natives of these EU countries. In addition to testing the effects of individual factors, such as parental education and religion, we esti...

This chapter provides a review of the most important processes that influence inequality in and around education, describing current research in this area to the best of my ability. Cross-national comparisons play an important role in those parts of this chapter, which discusses system effects. This review is based on my own interpretation of the “...

Denominational schooling makes up an important part of European educational systems. Given its specificity, denominational schooling can be expected to place a greater weight on values teaching and moral education. As such, it may be more effective in bringing about certain attitudes and opinions. It also may be more successful in creating a warm a...

The effect of two characteristics of school populations on reading skills will be estimated in this paper: share and diversity, both on the ethnic and the social-cultural dimension. We use the cross-national PISA-data 2006, both for the 15 years old native pupils and the pupils with a migrant background. A larger ethnic diversity of schools in seco...

Cross-national research is by definition carried out between different countries. Looking at country differences often results in common and diverse sets of divorce risks. This article uses a cross-national research perspective on divorce risks within a single country. Belgium is a special case in this respect. The division of the country in two re...

Drawing on the second and third wave of the European Social Survey, we analyse the perception of in-group discrimination of 7034 immigrants from 177 different countries of origin in 14 European Union countries. In addition to testing the effects of individual factors, such as education, religion, and migration history, we estimate the effects of ma...

Previous research has found parental divorce to have negative effects on children's educational attainment; in addition, it has been noted that the effects of divorce are not the same in all western societies. However, research on Catholic and southern European countries is missing. The aim of this paper is to add to the research on the relation be...

This study explicitly considers that education is a multi-input multi-output production process subject to inefficient behaviors that can be identified at student level. Therefore a distance function allows us to calculate different aspects of educational technology. The paper presents an empirical application of this model using Spanish data from...

We used data on women’s first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys to analyse the intergenerational transmission of divorce across 18 countries and to seek explanations in macro-level characteristics for the cross-national variation. Our results show that women whose parents divorced have a significantly higher risk of divorce in 17 coun...

Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first- and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their schol...

ICS Radboud University Nijmegen This article explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries, and immigrant communities help explain differences in immigrant children’s educational achievement. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we analyze the mathematical performance of 7,403 pupils from 35 di...

The gross differences in scholastic achievement among public, private government-dependent, and private independent schools in 22 countries are analyzed with Programme for International Student Assessment 2000 data. In a multilevel approach, the authors estimate these sector effects, controlling for sociological characteristics of students and pare...

Has the Austrian-German nobility had the same high degree of no-ble homogamy during the 20th century as the Dutch nobility? Noble homog-amy among the Dutch nobility was one of the two main reasons for their 'con-stant noble advantage' in obtaining elite positions during the 20th century. The Dutch on the one hand and the Austrian-German nobility on...

This article uses a cross-national research perspective on divorce risks within a single country. We will argue that Belgium as such is an interesting test case in international perspective since it combines-in a quasi experimental setting-a mutual national divorce legislation with different regional cultural traditions. Belgium is divided into a r...

We examine whether the spread of an exporting strategy can be characterized as a diffusion process using a general framework that accounts for attrition and changes in the pool of potential adopters and allows the diffusion rate to vary according to firm and market characteristics. Our findings indicate that the diffusion of exporting is described...

Drawing on the second and third wave of the European Social Survey, we analyse the perception of in-group discrimination of 7034 immigrants from 177 different countries of origin in 14 European Union countries. In addition to testing the effects of individual factors, such as education, religion, and migration history, we estimate the effects of ma...

There are four major ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands—labour migrants from Turkey and Morocco together with migrants from former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, namely Antilles and Surinam. Men from all four groups have lower labour-market participation and higher unemployment than the indigenous Dutch, and this holds for the second gener...

Levels and Dronkers (20068. Dronkers , J. and Wanner , R. A. 2006 . Waarom verdienen immigranten minder? Effecten van immigratiebeleid en arbeidsmarktkenmerken [Why do immigrants earn less? Effects of immigration policies and labour market characteristics] . Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken , 22 : 379 – 394 . View all references) showed that ed...

What determines the confidence of immigrants in public institutions? Using pooled data from the European Social Survey from 26 countries, the study examines whether processes of social exclusion and discrimination can account for migrants’ confidence in public institutions. Specifically, it examines the role of the quality of public institutions an...

Why do immigrants earn less? Effects of immigration policy and labour market characteristics Why do immigrants earn less? Effects of immigration policy and labour market characteristics The average household income of first generation immigrants in Europe and North- America is lower than that of natives, and this difference can not be explained by...

This study examines the effects of a family's and individual children's characteristics on the probability of having a divorce. Current research shows a clear indication of increased divorce risks if an individual's parents or siblings have experienced a divorce. Explanations include both shared family characteristics (including genetic effects) an...