School Grades and Neighbourhoods – A Natural Experiment

Wazah Pello-Esso; Ulf Gerdtham; Sara Larsson Lönn; Jan Sundquist; Kristina Sundquist

doi:10.33134/njmr.878

School Grades and Neighbourhoods – A Natural Experiment

Nordic Journal of Migration Research

Volume 15 (2025): Issue 4

By: Wazah Pello-Esso, Ulf Gerdtham, Sara Larsson Lönn, Jan Sundquist and Kristina Sundquist

Open Access

|Oct 2025

Abstract

Adolescents with an immigrant background have poorer educational performance than their native counterparts, which may partly be explained by the quality of their neighbourhood area upon immigration to Sweden. An important part of neighbourhood quality is neighbourhood socioeconomic status (NSES). This study examines the impact of initial NSES on subsequent school grades in refugees by using a natural experiment that took place between 1985 and 1994 when refugees were randomly assigned to Swedish neighbourhoods. We applied principal component analysis to assess NSES based on neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics. We found robust evidence that higher initial NSES was associated with higher school grades in adolescents. In addition, estimated marginal effects showed that low‑performing students’ school grades improved even more when the initial NSES increased. Our results suggest that refugee children benefit academically from initial settlement in less‑deprived neighbourhoods.

JEL Classification

R00

C38

D12

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/njmr.878 | Journal eISSN: 1799-649X

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Language: English

Page range: 9 - 9

Submitted on: May 5, 2024

Accepted on: Jul 7, 2025

Published on: Oct 29, 2025

Published by: Helsinki University Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Education,

natural experiment,

neighbourhood effect,

neighbourhood socioeconomic status,

school grades

© 2025 Wazah Pello-Esso, Ulf Gerdtham, Sara Larsson Lönn, Jan Sundquist, Kristina Sundquist, published by Helsinki University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 15 (2025): Issue 4