Are there immigrant-gender gaps in education? An empirical investigation based on PISA data from Italy.

Gender and migratory background are widely accepted in the economics of education literature as factors highly correlated 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 school assessment (differences in scores between immigrants and natives and between girls and boys). In line with previous work, we find that girls outperform boys in reading and are outperformed by them in math and science, and that immigrant students’ test scores are persistently below those of natives. Interestingly, however, immigrant girls are less at a disadvantage in math and science relative to immigrant boys, than native girls are with respect to native boys. Moreover, the immigrant girls’ advantage in reading relatively to immigrant boys is wider than that of native girls with respect to native boys. Overall, we find the stronger disadvantage is that of immigrant boys in reading-related fields. Language spoken at home is one of the main factors affecting this result, while family background strongly influences immigrant girls’ performances. Targeted policies should therefore be implemented.