Is there an immigrant-gender gap ineducation? An empirical investigation based on PISA data from Italy

t. Gender and origin background are widely accepted in the economics of education literature
as factors that highly correlate with educational outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted
so far to the interaction of these two dimensions. We use Italian data from PISA 2015 to investigate
potential immigrant-gender gaps in education. We find that, as expected, girls outperform boys in
reading and are outperformed by them in math and science. In addition, immigrant students’ scores
are persistently below those of natives. However, interestingly, we find that being immigrant and
female does not imply a double disadvantage in math and science. On the contrary, immigrant girls
slightly compensate for the immigrant gap in all disciplines. Moreover, the wider gap we find is that
of immigrant boys in reading: it ranges from to 0.66 to 2 school years with respect to native boys.
Language spoken at home is one of the main cofactors affecting immigrant boy’s scores. Targeted
policies should therefore be implemented.