What drew my eye were the graphs breaking down educational attainment for foreign-born Swedes by continent of birth. Data for country of birth was not provided, unfortunately. I was a little surprised at first to see that the performance of Asians on certain indicators was fairly mediocre until I remembered that the largest Asian group in Sweden is - Iraqis. Not what we think of when we hear "Asian" here in the United States.
Below is a chart showing the percentage of foreign born students living in Sweden ten years or more with high enough grades in primary school to be eligible to attend Sweden's three year, upper secondary school (grades 10 - 12), broken down by region of birth and sex:
The differences are not that great. But the pattern is familiar to anyone who has studied race differences in educational achievement and intelligence - which are strongly correlated - in the United States and other developed countries. For example, Arabs and blacks - lumped together here as Africans - are outperformed by whites, regardless of gender. All white groups also outperform South Americans, when controlling for gender. South American females do match males from "other European countries" -- 83 percent of both groups are eligible to attend upper secondary school. Note that upper secondary school begins at age 17, so these percentages are for students who have spent the majority of their lives in Sweden.
Among those who attend secondary school, the same pattern of achievement as measured by grades emerges. Between 1998 and 2006, which is the time frame given in the report, students born in Nordic and EU countries earned the highest grades, on par with native Swedes, followed by North Americans and Asians (among males, the two groups' grades are comparable; among females, North Americans outperform Asians) followed by South Americans, then Africans. Unfortunately, the report doesn't present the raw data used in the graphs so I can't reconstruct a visual display of the information. But the graphs themselves are easily accessible if you follow the link to the report at the top of the post and go to page 40.
Add Sweden to the list of developed countries in which the familiar racial pattern of educational attainment emerges.
11 comments:
No surprise, a Swedish study ranks Nordic as the highest. Only English or Anglo researches can rank non-Anglo at higher levels than Anglo themself. The pattern consistent indicates English culture as least ethnocentric. Thus, non-biased research findings are most likely from English or WASPs.
One caution is in order. The graph's Y axis starts at 72(%) rather than at zero, which means that height differences in the bars are significantly exaggerated. A quick glance makes it seem as if Nordic males are almost twice as likely as African males to qualify for further schooling, when in fact the difference is a much more modest 87% vs. 79%.
Peter
Here is more reliable data base which might contradicts the swedish data even among European nations.
http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_AppendixB.pdf
Peter,
Good point. I did note in the post that the differences are not great. It's the familiarity of the pattern that interests me, though. I wish the Swedes had broken this down by race instead of continent of origin, thereby lumping Iraqis with Chinese and Moroccans with Nigerians.
AG -- Thanks for the link. That study (a Boston College study) appears to agree in its broadest outlines with the Swedish study, at least on the following points: people of African and South American origin underperform almost everyone, and Asian and Northern European nations outperform almost everyone. Note that the BC study included only a few northern African nations; south and central Africa is entirely missing.
That study (a Boston College study) appears to agree in its broadest outlines with the Swedish study, at least on the following points: people of African and South American origin underperform almost everyone
According to some figures posted at Gene Expression a while back, black African students in Britain actually outscore white British students on some standardized tests (called the GCSE, if I recall correctly). Black Caribbean students don't do quite as well, though they're well ahead of the Pakistanis.
Here's the one post I could find referencing British ethnic group performance on the GCSE: this post.
These data are consistent with the general trends mentioned in my response to AG; perhaps you're referring to some other post? Please provide a link.
A few years ago there was a lot of noise in the British press over the fact that African female students in Britain outscored White British boys on the GCSE. That fact is reflected in the post on GNXP Algebraic links to: note that 48.9 percent of Black African girls scored satisfactory on the GSCE, versus 47.4 percent of White British boys. Black African girls did NOT outscore White British girls, however (they were nearly ten percentage points behind their white peers). Nor did Black African male students outscore white British male students (they were 10 percentage points behind their white peers). So, when you control for gender, the familiar pattern regarding race and educational attainment holds.
In the figures given in the GNXP post, Pakistanis outscore Black Africans and Black Caribbeans. In more recent years, Pakistanis have dropped to an intermediate position between the two black groups.
"I wish the Swedes had broken this down by race instead of continent of origin, thereby lumping Iraqis with Chinese and Moroccans with Nigerians."
Why do you prefer to see the breakdown by race rather than region? There is no basis for race, it is a fake construct. Region and environment count for a much higher percentage of a person's evolution than race does.
Aufumy,
Race is a genetic reality, as individuals cluster genetically with members of their race - even members of their same ethnic group, if you look at enough SNPs.
Dienekes has a good series of posts on ethnic and racial clustering, which I've filtered for you below. The visuals are pretty cool.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/search/label/Clusters
The reason I would rather they broke it down by race is that it might shed light on the causes of the black-white achievement gap that here in the U.S. If similar patterns emerge in other countries among the children of African immigrants, it calls into question the argument that African-American underachievement is part of the legacy of slavery.
"There is no basis for race, it is a fake construct."
Have you seen the Risch & Tang study (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005)? Here is Steve Hsu's comment:
"Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005.) Of course, we can get into endless arguments about how we define European or Asian, and of course there is substructure within the clusters, but it is rather obvious that there are identifiable groupings, and as the Risch study shows, they correspond very well to self-identified notions of race.
We see that there can be dramatic group differences in phenotypes even if there is complete allele overlap between two groups - as long as the frequency or probability distributions are distinct. But it is these distributions that are measured by the metric we defined earlier. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to group differences.
This leads us to two very distinct possibilities in human genetic variation:
Hypothesis 1: (the PC mantra) The only group differences that exist between the clusters (races) are innocuous and superficial, for example related to skin color, hair color, body type, etc.
Hypothesis 2: (the dangerous one) Group differences exist which might affect important (let us say, deep rather than superficial) and measurable characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, personality, athletic prowess, etc.
Note H1 is under constant revision, as new genetically driven group differences (e.g., particularly in disease resistance) are being discovered. According to the mantra of H1 these must all (by definition) be superficial differences.
A standard argument against H2 is that the 50k years during which groups have been separated is not long enough for differential natural selection to cause any group differences in deep characteristics. I find this argument quite naive, given what we know about animal breeding and how evolution has affected the (ever expanding list of) "superficial" characteristics. Many genes are now suspected of having been subject to strong selection over timescales of order 5k years or less. For further discussion of H2 by Steve Pinker, see here.
The predominant view among social scientists is that H1 is obviously correct and H2 obviously false. However, this is mainly wishful thinking. Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect."
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html
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