Parental contextual education and educational mobility among the children of Asian American immigrants

Many Asian American immigrant populations are highly selective in education relative to both US-born individuals and those from their country of origin. The latter form of selectivity—contextual education—has gained interest in recent stratification research. Contextual education accounts for a portion of Asian Americans’ high average educational attainment. However, research has not evaluated parental contextual education’s role in Asian Americans’ high educational mobility—the weak association between parental and offspring education. Drawing on a linked dataset of the National Education Longitudinal Study and the Barro-Lee Educational Attainment Dataset, this study extends knowledge of contextual education’s role for Asian Americans’ education outcomes. Consistent with prior research, the analysis finds that parental contextual education accounts for a portion of the Chinese and Korean children of immigrants’ higher average education levels relative to later generation White respondents. Parental contextual education also accounts for a portion of the weak parent-offspring education association among Chinese and Korean children of immigrants. These results suggest that contextual education may play a small-to-moderate role in the high educational mobility among some Asian American immigrant populations.