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Abstract
This article analyses gaps in the university graduation rates of third-generation Ashkenazim and Mizrahim (the two major ethnic groups among Israeli Jews), in comparison to the same gaps among members of the second generation. The empirical analyses have been performed using a special file of the 1995 Israeli census which matched records of respondents to their parents in the 1983 Census, thereby allowing identification of the ethnicity of the third generation for a representative sample of men and women, 25–34 years of age in 1995, as well as the identification of persons of mixed ethnicity. The results suggest that the gaps between the two major ethnic groups are not smaller in the third generation than in the second generation. Persons of mixed ethnicity – of both the second and third generations – are located about midway between the two ethnic groups with respect to their university graduation rates. Much of the ethnic-based gap in university graduation is due to differences in family background, especially among women. We discuss the implications of these results for the future of ethnic-based stratification in Israel.
Acknowledgements
This research was partly supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 919/04). Earlier versions of this article were presented in colloquia in Columbia University, Bard College, Haifa University, and at the Israeli Sociological Association Meeting (Beer Sheva, 2004). We thank participants in these seminars, and Hanna Ayalon, Hadas Mandel, Barbara Okun, Joel Perlmann, and Yossi Shavit for their comments on earlier versions of this article.
Notes
1. Israeli Arabs are not considered in this study because they are neither immigrants nor the children of immigrants. Moreover, since the number of Arab-Jewish marriages is very small, there are virtually no persons of mixed Arab/Jewish ethnicity in Israel.
2. Before 1980 matriculation diploma practically guaranteed admission to a university in most fields of studies (Ayalon Citation2000). However, followed continuous reforms in matriculation exams in the 1980s and 1990s this is no longer the case. See Ayalon and Shavit (Citation2004) for the effect of the reforms on the ethnic gap in attaining a matriculation diploma leading to university admission.
3. The results are unchanged if persons who resided with only one parent in 1983 are included in the analysis (and hence their ethnic origin is determined according to only one parent or grandparent).
4. We also estimated some of the models separating members of the second generation, both of whose parents were born abroad, from those having one parent who was born abroad and one in Israel. The results were appreciably the same.
5. We excluded the few cases belonging to the fourth generation (both grandparents born in Israel). Their university graduation rates (25 per cent) are similar to those of mixed ethnicity.
6. The results are appreciably the same when 'years of schooling' is the educational measure (Appendix A).
7. The proportions of those 25–29 years of age with less than a B.A. degree, who were still studying towards their BA degree in 1995 and are thus expected to have graduated in the late 1990s, are appreciably higher among Ashkenazim (25 per cent) than among Mizrahim (14 per cent), and the results do not differ by generation.
8. The matched file includes information on all the children who resided in their parents’ households in 1983, hence the youngest children in 1995 are twelve years old.
9. This conclusion, however, is limited to those born before 1983. Since the proportion of ethnically intermarried couples increased from about 14 per cent in the 1950s and early 1960s to about 28 per cent in the early 1990s (Okun Citation2001), the proportion of persons of mixed ethnicity is likely to be higher among those born in the late 1980s and 1990s.
10. The census makes no distinction between teachers colleges and other institutions of higher education. However, since most elementary school-teachers are graduates of teachers’ colleges, we can use this occupation as a proxy for attending a teachers college rather than a university.
11. Dahan et al. (Citation2002) focused on high-school matriculation rates among young adults, aged 18–21 in 1995, who lived in their parents’ households in that year. Hence, the parents’ and grandparents’ country of birth were obtained from the parents’ records. Evidently, this data-set is inappropriate for estimating university graduation rates among older persons (25–34, the age group used by both Friedlander et al. [Citation2002] and ourselves) because most persons of this age group do not reside in their parents’ households.
12. We checked for gender differences in the country of birth of grandfathers of third-generation Mizrahim. The results suggest that about one third of the grandfathers of third-generation Mizrahim were born in Yemen, reflecting the composition of Mizrahim in the Jewish society of Mandatory Palestine. However, since this pattern was found among both gender groups, Yemenite origin cannot be invoked to explain the lower educational achievements of third-generation Mizrahi men.