Does low skilled immigration increase the education of natives? Evidence from Italian provinces

While there is a vast literature considering the labour market effects of immigration, less has been done to investigate how immigration affects the educational choices of young natives. Using Italian provincial data and an instrumental variables strategy, we show that the recent rise of low skilled immigrants has increased both the probability that young native high school graduates (males in the whole country and females in the industrialized North) enrol in or attain higher education and the probability that young natives (males and females) with less than high school education stay out of further education or training. We show that our results can be explained by a standard model of educational choices if some conditions are satisfied.