Immigration, social change and assimilation: Educational attainment among birth cohorts of Jewish ethnic groups in Israel, 1925-29 to 1965-69

We consider changes in ethnic gaps among Jewish Israelis in a variety of measures of educational attainment over three generations, forty years of birth cohorts, and in three broad ethnic groups. We document the educational attainments of huge waves of immigrants and their descendants, beginning with those born before the foundation of the State, and ending with those whose members are now entering higher education. In addition, we examine ethnic gaps while controlling for important determinants of educational attainment, such as indicators of parents' and community-level socio-economic status. We show that gaps in education across ethnic groups were quite large initially. We also document significant reductions in these gaps over successive cohorts and generations. We note that ethnic convergence at the primary and secondary school levels occurred between the first-generation and second-generation immigrants, while convergence at the matriculation and post-secondary levels proceeds during the third generation.