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Ethnic Differences in School Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newburyport, 1850–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Steven Herscovici
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Extract

Historians who have studied school attendance in the nineteenth century have noted the differences in enrollment rates between children of immigrants and children of parents born in the United States. These differences in attendance rates apparently persist even after controlling for the social and economic backgrounds of the children. Despite the fact that this result is familiar in the literature, historians have not agreed upon a single cause for these differences (Kaestle and Vinovskis 1980; Soltow and Stevens 1981; Perlmann 1988). Scholars have debated many possible reasons: perhaps different cultural or religious circumstances led immigrants and native-born Americans to act differently toward their children’s education; perhaps immigrants took their children out of school earlier because they could not afford the luxury of educating their children; or perhaps immigrants made a conscious choice between the education of their children and better housing, or other consumption for themselves and their families.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1994 , pp. 471 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

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