School choice differences between the local and immigrant population: Chilean case

Abstract

Immigration is an increasing phenomenon in Chile in recent years. In particular, more than half of the immigrants that arrive to the country do so with their children, who enroll into the educational system, In this paper, we seek to understand which type of educational institution chilean and immigrant families choose and, in case of finding differences, study them. We use education ministry´s databases to estimate a probit model of school choice widely used in the literature of school choice. We separately estimate the model for immigrants and chileans in order to compare the possible differences in the variables affecting the school choice. We find that, although immigrants and chileans are similar, and their decisions are similar, they value certain characteristics differently, and the main reason behind the differences in school choice is related to the sociodemographic composition.