Expected Occupational Contexts and Postgraduate Pursuit among Skilled Immigrants and Natives in the United States

Abstract

For college-educated immigrants, investing in a US postgraduate degree plays a critical role in skill transfer and career enhancement. However, little is known about the role of the US occupational structure, a key aspect in immigrants’ context of reception, in shaping immigrants’ postgraduate decisions. Using 2015 National Survey of College Graduates and linking three occupational characteristics to the field of study of bachelor's degree from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Current Population Survey, this article examines the associations of rising educational expectation, occupational sex segregation, and occupational immigrant concentration with the pursuit of a US master's degree among college-educated immigrants and natives. The analysis shows that while occupational female share was positively associated with postgraduate pursuit among natives, such relationship was weaker among immigrants with a foreign bachelor's degree. In contrast, occupational immigrant concentration was positively associated with postgraduate pursuit among foreign-educated immigrants but negatively among natives. The occupational share of workers with advanced degrees operated similarly between natives and immigrants. Moreover, these occupational effects varied more by immigration status than by gender. These findings underscore the host country's occupational contexts that generate different incentives and constraints for immigrants and natives to pursue a postgraduate degree. This adds nuance to the immigrant human capital investment model that posits immigrants will invest more in human capital than natives. The differential postgraduate investment between immigrants and natives in response to the occupational contexts yield implications for subsequent education–occupation match, career mobility, and economic stratification within the highly educated workforce.

Keywords

Occupational context postgraduate education skilled immigration immigrant human capital investment gender‌

Introduction

Since the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, the number of skilled immigrants¹ in the United States has quadrupled from 3.1 million to 12.6 million, accounting for 17 percent of the college-educated workforce in 2018 (National Science Board 2018). However, about 21–29 percent of recent US immigrants are underemployed in jobs that require no more than a high school diploma (Lu and Hou 2020). The increasing share of college-educated immigrants and their skill underutilization raise concerns about “brain waste” and their long-term integration in the US labor market (Batalova and Fix 2021). While additional education acquired in the US can facilitate skill transfer and improve immigrants’ economic performance (Akresh 2006, 2007; Hall and Farkas 2008), little is known about postmigration educational investment, such as the pursuit of a postgraduate degree, among college-educated immigrants. Compared to the bachelor's degree, a postgraduate degree has produced greater economic returns over the past decades and facilitated access to well-paid occupations (Posselt and Grodsky 2017). Investing in a US postgraduate degree may help college-educated immigrants reduce underemployment and enhance career prospects.

Our current knowledge of skilled immigrants’ educational investment is limited in two ways. On the one hand, much previous research on immigrant economic integration has shed light on the consequences of lacking destination-country-specific educational investment, or the labor market disadvantage associated with a foreign degree in skill transfer, vertical education–occupation mismatch, and wage penalty (Arbeit and Warren 2013; Lu and Li 2022; Zeng and Xie 2004). Less systematic attention has been devoted to understanding the determinants of pursuing a US degree, which open avenues for reshaping immigrant–native labor market inequality. On the other hand, among the few studies that considered the determinants of immigrant educational investment, they usually focused on individual-level factors and treated such decision as an outcome of pre-migration schooling, skill transferability (e.g., by source country and admission criteria), migration motivations and settlement intentions (Chiswick and Miller 1994; Duleep and Regets 1999; van Tubergen and van de Werfhorst 2007; Zwysen 2019). As a result, these accounts overlooked the structural-level determinants, such as the occupational structure in the host country that shapes opportunity costs and returns to further educational investment. In the US, the decision to pursue a postgraduate degree typically reflects individuals’ knowledge of labor market conditions and future occupational aspirations (Han 2016; Monaghan and Jang 2017). The labor market demands and rewards embedded in the occupational structure (Kalleberg and Mouw 2018) may shape how individuals perceive the value of a postgraduate degree in job access and career mobility (Monaghan and Jang 2017; Seibert et al. 2013). Therefore, a fuller understanding of immigrant postgraduate decisions requires the consideration of the host country's occupational context, a key aspect in immigrants’ context of reception.

This article focuses on three characteristics of the occupational structure—rising educational expectation, occupational sex segregation, and occupational immigrant concentration—and examines their associations with postgraduate pursuit among US college-educated workforce. These occupational characteristics represent important features of the US labor market conditions and institutionalize opportunities and constraints at the structural level, which may shape the pursuit of a postgraduate degree. For example, the transition to a knowledge-intensive economy (Powell and Snellman 2004) and the expansion of college education in the US (Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow 2018) contributed to the “rising educational expectation,” which increased the demand for workers with advanced degrees. Moreover, the persistent occupational sex segregation in the US labor market may push workers in female-dominated occupations to invest in a postgraduate degree for career enhancement, given the lower labor market rewards associated with female-dominated occupations relative to male-dominated ones (Blau, Brummund, and Liu 2013; Mandel 2018). Further, the disproportionate concentration of immigrants in occupations in short supply of native workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018), contributed by the targeted immigration policy and employer selection (Espenshade 2001; Hao 2013), may signal varying employment opportunities for college graduates to pursue a postgraduate degree.

Moreover, skill underutilization is not unique to college-educated immigrants, where about 15–25 percent of US-born college graduates (Lu and Hou 2020) and 42 percent of recent graduates (Federal Reserve Bank 2020) were underemployed. Do natives respond differently to these three occupational characteristics by pursuing a postgraduate degree, compared to their immigrant counterparts? The influx of skilled immigration may intensify competition between immigrants and native-born workers (Borjas 2005; Chiswick 1989; Lu and Hou 2020), and immigrants’ postgraduate pursuit may also affect natives’ educational decisions (McHenry 2015). Therefore, we need to include both natives and immigrants in the analysis.

Further, gender plays a crucial role in immigrants’ human capital investments (Cobb-Clark, Connolly, and Worswick 2005; Duleep and Sanders 1993). Do college-educated women and men respond differently, depending on immigration status? Previous studies on gendered immigrant human capital investment (IHCI) focused on married immigrants (Long 1980; Liversage 2009), which not only obscured heterogeneity among immigrant women by marital status, origin country and place of bachelor's degree, but also overlooked the role of the occupational structure in postmigration educational decisions. Given that one-third of immigrant women in the US hold a bachelor's degree or higher (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018), it is important to understand how occupational characteristics shape postgraduate pursuit in gendered ways.

Using the data from 2015 National Survey of College Graduates and linking three occupational characteristics to the field of study of bachelor's degree in the year prior to college graduation from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Current Population Survey, this article examines the associations of three expected occupational characteristics with the pursuit of the first US master's degree by nativity and gender. The findings show that, while occupational educational expectation was positively associated with the pursuit of a US master's degree for both natives and immigrants, occupational sex segregation and occupational immigrant concentration operated differently for these two groups. Further, these occupational effects varied more by immigration status than by gender. These findings underscore the occupational contexts in the host country that generate different incentives and constraints for immigrants and natives to pursue a postgraduate degree. This adds nuance to the IHCI model, which posits that immigrants will invest more in human capital than natives (Duleep and Regets 1999). More broadly, the differential investment in postgraduate education in response to the occupational contexts between immigrants (especially those holding a foreign bachelor's degree) and natives yield implications for subsequent education–occupation match, career mobility, and economic stratification within the skilled workforce.

The rest of the article is organized as follows. The second section provides an overview of postmigration investment in education and discusses the IHCI model's limitations. The third and fourth sections build this article's theoretical framework by considering the role of occupational characteristics and gender structure in postgraduate decisions and develop the hypotheses. The fifth section describes data and methods, and the sixth section presents results. The seventh section discusses the implications of the findings presented here and identifies avenues for future research.

Postmigration Educational Investment among Skilled Immigrants

Numerous studies on wage inequality within the US college-educated workforce pointed to the disadvantage associated with a foreign degree, where immigrants who earned their highest degree abroad encounter barriers in skill transfer and credential recognition, and experience education–occupation mismatch and wage penalty (Arbeit and Warren 2013; Lu and Li 2022; Zeng and Xie 2004). Nevertheless, studies on immigrant economic assimilation suggest that immigrants may improve their labor market outcomes over time through investing in destination-country-specific human capital (Akresh 2007; Zwysen 2019). Among various forms of human capital investment, such as improving language proficiency and gathering information about the labor market, acquiring formal education has been shown to effectively facilitate skill transfer, increase returns to source-country human capital, and improve labor market performance (Akresh 2007; Chiswick and Miller 1994; Friedberg 2000).

To understand the determinants of postmigration educational investment among skilled immigrants, it is useful to draw explanations from the IHCI model, which focused on opportunity costs and perceived returns to explain immigrants’ human capital investment decisions (Duleep and Regets 1999). For immigrants, human capital acquired in the country of origin is not fully transferable to the country of destination. As a result, immigrants, especially those with limited skill transferability, will have lower opportunity costs and greater perceived returns (combining both normal return and immigrant-specific return), thus will invest more in human capital than natives and immigrants with higher skill transferability (Duleep and Regets 1999). Following this logic, we may expect that immigrants holding a foreign bachelor's degree are more likely to pursue a postgraduate degree than natives and immigrants holding a US bachelor's degree, given the skill transfer barriers associated with a foreign degree (Lancee and Bol 2017).

Despite the insights it provides, the IHCI model does not adequately consider the opportunity structure in the host country's labor market, a critical institution for immigrant “modes of incorporation” (Portes and Böröcz 1989; Portes and Rumbaut 1990). Labor market opportunities and constraints may shape how individuals evaluate the opportunity costs and returns to further educational investment (Seibert et al. 2013; Witteeveen 2021). For example, one study examined macroeconomic conditions at arrival and found that immigrants who arrived in periods of high unemployment in the Netherlands were more likely to enroll in school (van Tubergen and van de Werfhorst 2007). Another study on ethnic wage penalty across 11 European countries suggested that the inclusion of skilled immigrants in the lowest strata of the occupational structure limits the role of human capital in achieving good employment returns (Cantalini, Guetto, and Panichella 2022). Regarding the investment in a postgraduate degree in the US, the occupational structure in the labor market may be particularly important, given that postgraduate decision is closely tied to individual's occupational aspiration (Han 2016; Monaghan and Jang 2017). College-educated immigrants who aim to enter the US labor market may become increasingly aware of the demand-side conditions embedded in the occupational structure, such as occupations with increasing demands for workers with advanced degrees, occupations with limited earning potential and career prospects, and occupations in short supply of native workers but in great demand for immigrants.

Moreover, given that economic returns to college education have flattened in the US (Ashworth and Ransom 2019; Valletta 2019), investing in a postgraduate degree is relevant for not only immigrants with barriers in skill transfer but also college graduates with fewer or no barriers in skill transfer. Therefore, determining whether immigrants with a foreign bachelor's degree are still more likely than natives and US-educated immigrants to invest in a postgraduate degree, as suggested by the IHCI model, requires a consideration of the occupational contexts and how they shape postgraduate decisions differently for immigrants and natives.

Expected Characteristics of the Occupational Structure and Postgraduate Pursuit

This article focuses on three characteristics of the occupational structure—occupational educational expectation, occupational sex segregation, and occupational immigrant concentration—which represent important features of US labor market conditions and institutionalize opportunities and constraints at the structural level (Autor 2014; Cohen and Huffman 2003; Hao 2013). This section turns to each occupational characteristic and discusses its association with postgraduate pursuit for immigrants and natives, respectively.

Rising Occupational Educational Expectation

The transition to a knowledge economy has brought significant changes to the US workplace and increased demand for highly educated workforce (Goldin and Katz 2010; Powell and Snellman 2004), contributing to the rising occupational educational expectation. Meanwhile, college education has greatly expanded in the past 80 years (Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow 2018). However, the wage premium for college graduates over high-school graduates only increased by 6 percent from 2000 to 2013, compared to a 17-percent increase for graduates with advanced degrees (Valletta 2019).

The relationship between rising occupational educational expectation and postgraduate pursuit is not clear-cut and subject to empirical testing. On the one hand, rising educational expectation may push individuals to invest in a postgraduate degree to stay competitive and avoid the risk of downgrading into less-skilled jobs (Valletta 2019), as suggested by the relative education theory (Bol 2015). On the other hand, occupations increasingly filled with workers holding advanced degrees may discourage college graduates from making further educational investment, given the decreased relative value (Horowitz 2018) associated with a postgraduate degree. However, immigrants, especially those holding a foreign bachelor's degree, may be particularly sensitive to the rising occupational educational expectation. Considering racial discrimination and employer implicit bias in the US labor market (Gaddis 2015), immigrants may be more motivated than natives to respond to the rising educational expectation by investing in a postgraduate degree to signal their competitiveness.

Hypothesis 1: Immigrants, especially those who attained their bachelor's degree abroad, are more likely than natives to pursue a master's degree when occupations are increasingly filled with workers holding advanced degrees.

Occupational Sex Segregation

Occupational sex segregation remains the most persistent and prominent feature of the US labor market, where about 40 percent of college graduates must switch occupations to achieve occupational integration by gender (Blau, Brummund, and Liu 2013). Operating as “different but unequal” through allocative discrimination and cultural devaluation of the feminine (Reskin 1993; Petersen and Morgan 1995), female-dominated occupations are associated with a wide range of disadvantages in on-the job training, promotion opportunities, authority and earnings, compared to male-dominated ones (Petersen and Morgan 1995; Tomaskovic-Devey and Skaggs 2002). The female devaluation on pay in the US has intensified over time and is most severe in highly paid occupations (Mandel 2018). As a result, the limited earning potential and career prospects associated with female-concentrated occupations may push individuals, including both natives and immigrants, to attain a higher degree to break these constraints.

Hypothesis 2: The association between occupational female concentration and postgraduate pursuit is positive for both immigrants and natives.

Occupational Immigrant Concentration

College-educated immigrants in the US are not evenly distributed across occupations. In the higher-end of the occupational structure, immigrants are underrepresented in legal, community and social services, education/training, arts/design/entertainment, managerial and business occupations but overrepresented in health-care support, computer and mathematical, science, and architecture/engineering occupations (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018). Occupational immigrant concentration may reflect the implicit preference in the immigration policy, where employment-based preferences target immigrants with extraordinary levels of ability in fields of short supply from native workers (Gonzalez and Kuenzi 2012). Moreover, immigrant-concentrated occupations may also signal that employers are willing to shoulder the hiring costs by paying the petition fee and prevailing wage for temporary workers (Hao 2013). Further, the increasing foreign-born workers within an occupation may push natives to choose occupations involving more communication-intensive and interpersonal skills, or occupations where they have a comparative advantage (Hanson and Liu 2018; Peri and Sparber 2011). Natives are also more likely than immigrants to opt for more lucrative occupations, such as law and medicine (Han 2016; Xie and Killewald 2012). Therefore, occupational segregation by nativity may shape how immigrants and natives evaluate job openings and labor market rewards. The occupational share of foreign-born workers may be irrelevant or less appealing to natives but is positively associated with postgraduate pursuit among college-educated immigrants to seize employment opportunities.

Hypothesis 3: The association between occupational immigrant concentration and postgraduate pursuit is positive among immigrants but null or negative among natives.

Gender Difference in Postgraduate Pursuit

Gender operates as a primary organizing principle in both home and host countries and shapes processes of migration and labor market integration (Flippen and Parrado 2015; Risman 2004). Prior scholarship on gendered human capital investment usually treated marriage as the key explanation and relied on the Family Investment Model (Duleep and Sanders 1993; Long 1980), which posits that married immigrant women usually take low-skilled job to finance their spouses’ human capital investment (Long 1980). Professional immigrant women may also prioritize the spouse's career development over their own, given the traditional gender role expectation and lack of childcare assistance (Liversage 2009; Phan et al. 2015). However, relying on the Family Investment Model to examine gender disparity in educational investment obscures the heterogeneity of immigrant women by marital status upon arrival (Donato, Piya and Jacobs 2014), origin country (Read and Cohen 2007) and the place of undergraduate education (Tong 2010). Particularly for immigrants who completed college education in the United States, college campuses can promote gender egalitarian beliefs independent of family background and upbringing (Campbell and Horowitz 2016). Therefore, immigrant women holding a US bachelor's degree may not necessarily lag behind their male counterparts in postgraduate pursuit.

Hypothesis 4: College-educated women, including natives and immigrants with a US bachelor's degree, are more likely than men to invest in a postgraduate degree, regardless of the expected occupational characteristics.

Moreover, a fuller understanding of immigrant gendered human capital investment calls attention to the occupational structure. Given occupational sex-nativity segregation, skilled immigrant women may face a limited set of occupations compared to their male counterparts. For example, immigrant-concentrated occupations for college-educated workers are more likely to be male-dominated (e.g., computer and mathematical, architecture and engineering, and physical sciences) than female-dominated (e.g., managerial, education/training and office and administrative support, see Olsen-Medina and Batalova 2020). Moreover, college-educated immigrant women face the risk of working in low-paid service occupations, including cleaning, food processing, and personal care which are female-dominated (Olsen-Medina and Batalova 2020). The limited employment opportunities in the higher-end of the occupational structure, contributed by sex-nativity occupational segregation, may constrain the role of postgraduate education in improving job access and career mobility for skilled immigrant women. As a result, they may find it hard to utilize additional educational investment to obtain jobs commensurate with their education. Alternatively, college-educated immigrant women, especially those holding a foreign bachelor's degree, may be particularly incentivized to pursue a postgraduate degree to reduce risks of occupational downgrading or for entry into male-dominated occupations. I will leave it to empirical testing.

Data and Methods

This article takes advantage of the data from 2015 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG 2015), which sampled 91,000 non-institutionalized college-educated individuals living in the United Sates. NSCG is well suited for this analysis, given its focus on the college-educated population, including those who attained their bachelor's degree in the US and abroad. Moreover, the rich retrospective educational history in NSCG enables researchers to pinpoint the first postgraduate degree within certain years after college graduation. To construct the expected occupational characteristics, the article further utilized data from five panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP 1993, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2008) and multiple years of the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of Current Population Survey (ASES-CPS 1994–2009).

The analytic sample is restricted to college graduates who attained bachelor's degree between 1995 and 2010, were aged 25–65, had available information on fields of study, and whose first postbaccalaureate pursuit was at the master level (N = 40,948)². The sample then dropped 87 natives who attended college abroad and 617 respondents who pursued their first master's degree in a foreign country (a total of 3.2% of the sample). In the end, the final sample had 40,244 respondents, including 8,936 immigrants, or 16.6 percent of the sample (weighted). Among immigrants, nearly half attained their bachelor's degree in a foreign country (n = 4,125). These percentages are consistent with national statistics from the 2015 American Community Survey.

Given that the NSCG only included immigrants who stayed in the United States, the sample may suffer from selection bias related to migration and return migration. For example, if immigrants who stayed in the United States are positively selected on a set of observed and unobserved characteristics compared to those who did not migrate (e.g., financial resources, motivation, and ability to learn and adapt), such selective migration can upwardly bias the estimation of immigrant postgraduate pursuit relative to natives. On the contrary, if immigrants who invested in a postgraduate degree already returned to the origin country by the time of survey, such selective return migration can lead to a downward bias. More problematically, the estimation bias becomes less predictable if migrants who migrated or returned differ in their expected occupational characteristics compared to those who did not migrate or stayed. To mitigate the issue of selective migration, this study adjusted for a set of sociodemographic characteristics and undergraduate education that may affect immigrants to invest in a US postgraduate degree. I discuss more fully in the conclusion.

Two sets of analyses are conducted to assess selection bias related to return migration. First, I compared the distribution of field of study associated with the postgraduate degree between two data sources: NSCG 2015 and CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees for Fall 2017 (CGS 2017; Okahana and Zhou 2018). CGS serves as the comprehensive source of information on master's and doctoral program applications, enrollment, and degrees in the US, and CGS 2017 has the closest publicly available data to compare with NSCG 2015. Among respondents who arrived on temporary visas, the distributions of fields of study are similar, except that NSCG respondents had a higher share in math/computer science/engineering than CGS (51.4% versus 42.6%), and a lower share in “other” fields (2.4% versus 6.1%, see supplemental materials). Given that the NSCG included immigrants who completed the postgraduate degree and stayed in the United States, while the CGS/GRE survey included those who were still enrolled, the selection bias related to return migration may not be very serious. Second, I conducted subgroup analysis by four broad fields of the bachelor's degree and by visa at arrival. These analyses enabled me to check whether the associations between occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit are driven by respondents graduating in certain fields or by those who faced legal constraints to stay after postgraduate education (e.g., students versus permanent residents).

Measures

Postgraduate pursuit. The pursuit of a U.S. master's degree within 5 years after college graduation is the outcome of interest and a binary variable. This variable was operationalized by subtracting 2 years from the attainment year of the first master's degree or from Year 2015 if the respondent was currently enrolled in a master's program without completion. Focusing on postgraduate investment within 5 years (27.9%) after college graduation may capture the feedback from the expected occupational contexts. Specifically, I grouped those who invested in a master's degree after 5 years of college graduation (7.9%) with those with only a bachelor's degree (64.2%). As a robustness check, I constructed the postgraduate pursuit either using 3 years to complete a master's degree or expanding the postgraduate investment to 10 years after graduation. Both yielded similar results (see supplemental materials).

Nativity-education group. I constructed a 3-category nativity-education group to capture nativity (US-born versus foreign-born) and place of bachelor's degree (US versus non-US). Previous studies suggest that the place of college education distinguishes immigrants by skill transferability, labor market performance, and gender-egalitarian socialization (Arbeit and Warren 2013; Campbell and Horowitz 2016; Zeng and Xie 2004). Respondents are categorized into three groups: (1) natives who attained their bachelor's degree in the United States (“Natives”), (2) the foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree (“FB-U”), and (3) the foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree (“FB-NU”).

Sex. Female was coded to 1 to measure whether women and men invested differently.

Expected occupational characteristics. Three occupational characteristics in a wide range of occupations—the share of workers with a master's degree or higher, the share of female workers, and the share of foreign-born workers—are linked to the field of study of the bachelor's degree prior to the year of college graduation (hence “expected”). The construction was based on crosswalks from NSCG, SIPP and ASEC-CPS. The measure of these expected occupational characteristics may not only capture labor market opportunities for college graduates over time but also consider the varying linkage strengths between each field of study and a set of occupations (Bol et al. 2019; DiPrete et al. 2017). The crosswalks, linking and calculation are specified in the Online Appendix.

Although the construction of the expected occupational characteristics may reduce individual variation within the same field of study (only differ by year), it links the educational institution to the labor market institution and enables us to conceptualize field of study from the perspective of labor market. Moreover, these expected occupational characteristics (visualized in Figure 1), can analytically distinguish fields that differ in educational expectation, sex segregation, and immigrant concentration. For example, for individuals majoring in Education, we do not know whether postgraduate pursuit was resulted from their linkage to higher female concentration, or to occupations requiring higher levels of education, or to occupations with lower immigrant concentration. In contrast, individuals majoring in Computer Science are linked to occupations characterized by lower female concentration, higher immigrant concentration, and moderate educational expectation compared to other fields.

Figure 1.

Expected occupational characteristics, 1996–2010.

Other covariates. Other adjustments include demographic characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity and whether one had a parent with a bachelor's degree or higher), college background other than place of education (e.g., age at college graduation; 3-category variable measuring graduation periods; 4-category fields of study; 3-cateogry variable indicating sources of financial support from parent, loan, or other; and whether one had a double major). For immigrants, I also adjusted for immigrant-related background, including visa at arrival (5-cateory including permanent resident, temporary worker, student, dependent, and other) and origin regions (3-category including Western, Asia, and Latin America or Africa).

Analytic Strategy

This article used logistic regression models to examine the associations of three occupational characteristics with the pursuit of a US master's degree, and whether these associations differ between immigrants and natives. Focusing on nativity-education group difference, the model incrementally adjusted for three sets of covariates: demographic characteristics, immigration-related background, and college background (M1); three expected occupational characteristics (M2); and the interaction between expected occupational characteristics and nativity-education group (M3). I then conducted two subgroup analyses by four broad fields of the bachelor's degree and immigrants’ visa at arrival.

The second analysis focused on gender difference in postgraduate pursuit depending on nativity-education group. I created the interaction terms between each expected occupational characteristic and sex and ran the model separately for natives, US-educated immigrants, and foreign-educated immigrants, respectively. I first focused on whether women differed from men in each nativity-education group. To examine whether women and men of the same nativity-education group responded to the occupational contexts differently, I focused on the interaction effects between the expected occupational characteristics and sex within each group. Lastly, to test whether the gender-differential occupational effects on postgraduate pursuit further vary by nativity, I formally tested the differences in the interaction coefficients between occupational characteristics and sex across nativity-education groups using -suest-command in Stata.

Results

Postgraduate Pursuit by Nativity, Place of College Education, and Gender

Figure 2 presents the weighted percentages of postgraduate pursuit by nativity-education group and further by visa at arrival. At first glance, the pursuit of a US master's degree seems to be consistent with the prediction from the IHCI model regarding skill transferability (Duleep and Regets 1999): immigrants who earned their bachelor's degree abroad were more likely than natives and US-educated immigrants to invest in a master's degree. However, a breakdown by visa at arrival reveals that this pattern was mainly driven by foreign-educated immigrants holding student or temporary worker visas, which is not surprising given the educational purpose/requirement for these visas. Contrary to the IHCI's prediction, foreign-educated immigrants who entered as lawful permanent residents (or LPRs), dependents, and with “other” category³ are less likely than US-educated immigrants in the same visa category and natives to invest in a master's degree (Figure 2). Moreover, excluding immigrants holding student/temporary worker visas at arrival (results not shown), the lower likelihood of investing in a master's degree among foreign-educated immigrants compared to natives and US-educated immigrants hold among college graduates majoring in agriculture/biology/physical sciences (24.9% versus 33.5% versus 34.8%), art/humanities/social sciences (16.8% versus 29.4% versus 27.9%) and business/education/health/other (9.3% versus 26.1% versus 13.2%), but not necessarily in computer science/engineering/statistics (24.3% versus 24.1% versus 22.5%). If skills in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields (given the shared fundamental paradigms, knowledge structure and quantitative methods, see Tang 2000) are more transferable than skills in fields requiring high English proficiency and cultural understanding of the host country (e.g., humanities, business, education), the lowest postgraduate pursuit among foreign-educated immigrants in non-STEM-related fields and similar levels of pursuit in computer science/engineering/statistics fields further raise questions about the prediction of the IHCI model.

Figure 2.

Postgraduate pursuit by nativity, place of bachelor's degree, and visa at arrival

Foreign-educated immigrants’ lower pursuit of a master's degree than natives and US-educated immigrants also holds by sex, except for those with student or temporary worker visas (results not shown). More importantly, contrary to the expectation that immigrant women prioritize immigrant men's human capital investment over their own in the Family Investment Model (Long 1980), immigrant women, particularly those holding a foreign degree, are more likely than their foreign-educated male counterparts to invest in a US master's degree, when they entered the US as LPRs (18.5% versus 8.8%), dependents (25.0% versus 10.3%) and with “other” visas (14.1% versus 6.6%, results not shown). The gender difference in postgraduate pursuit favoring women flipped for foreign-educated immigrants who entered as students and temporary workers. Together, these patterns point to the heterogeneity of gender difference in immigrant educational investment by immigration pathways. Given the distributional differences in the expected occupational characteristics and other background characteristics (including the sociodemographic, college education and immigration-related background) among natives, US- and foreign-educated immigrants (Table 1), I now turn to the multivariate analysis to examine whether the expected occupational characteristics help explain group disparity in postgraduate pursuit, net of controls for other background characteristics.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics by Nativity-Education Group.

	Total	Natives	FB-U	FB-NU
Female	56.3	57.4	54.9	46.1
Expected occupational characteristics (mean %)
Occ Master's or higher (SD)	14.6 (4.2)	14.7 (4.4)	14.1 (3.6)	14.7 (3.3)
Occ Female (SD)	47.0 (12.5)	48.0 (11.8)	44.0 (12.8)	39.3 (15.2)
Occ Foreign-born (SD)	10.5 (2.9)	10.3 (2.8)	11.1 (3.1)	11.9 (3.3)
Demographic background
Race/ethnicity
White	68.1	76.5	25.1	26.5
Black	9.0	9.1	12.5	3.9
Hispanic	13.9	12.1	28.3	16.8
Asian	9.1	2.2	34.0	52.8
Parental education>=BA	54.3	54.3	49.1	59.6
College background
Mean age at college graduation (SD)	25.0 (6.6)	25.1 (6.7)	26.2 (7.2)	22.4 (3.2)
Graduation cohort
1995–2002	45.3	45.0	42.3	51.6
2003–2007	34.0	34.0	32.4	35.4
2008–2010	20.7	21.0	25.3	12.9
Fields of study
Agriculture/biology/physical	6.9	6.5	8.4	9.4
Computer/engineering/statistics	14.5	10.9	21.8	43.0
Art/humanities/social sciences	33.2	35.1	28.7	18.4
Business/educ/health/other	45.4	47.5	41.2	29.2
Sources of financial support
Other than parent or loan	12.6	11.8	19.2	14.6
Parent	35.3	32.5	29.1	69.9
Loan	52.0	55.7	51.7	15.5
Double majored	13.6	13.4	15.5	13.6
Immigration-related^a
Visa at arrival
Permanent resident (PR)	33.0	–	47.2	18.8
Temporary worker	14.8	–	3.4	26.2
Student	20.0	–	13.3	26.7
Dependent	16.8	–	12.6	20.9
Other	15.4	–	23.5	7.3
Sending region
Western	18.8	–	18.3	19.3
Asia	53.2	–	45.1	61.3
Latin America/Africa	28.0	–	36.6	19.4
Observations	40,244	31,308	4811	4125

Notes: Percentages are presented, except for continuous variables including expected occupational characteristics and age at BA attainment (standard deviation in parentheses). All the statistics are weighted.

Natives: US-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-U: Foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-NU: Foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree.

The distribution is restricted to the foreign-born population.

The analytic sample is restricted to college graduates who attained BA between 1995 and 2010, aged 25–65, and whose highest degree is a master's degree (N = 40,244).

“Postgraduate pursuit” is defined as the pursuit of a master's degree in the U.S. within 5 years after college graduation, relative to no pursuit, based on the retrospective educational history.

Data Source: 2015 National Survey of College Graduates.

Expected Occupational Characteristics and Postgraduate Pursuit: Immigrants Versus Natives

Table 2 presents the results from logistic regression on pursuit of a master's degree within 5 years after college graduation. To ease the interpretation, expected occupational characteristics were centered at the grand mean. I converted coefficients from log-odds into odds ratios in the text when relevant. When further adjusted for expected occupational characteristics (M2) and interaction terms (M3), the nativity-education group disparity (M1) was reduced, suggesting the additional explanatory power introduced by the expected occupational contexts and their differential effects by nativity-education status.

Table 2.

Logistic Regression for Postgraduate Pursuit: Total.

	M1		M2		M3
Nativity-education group (ref: Natives)
FB-U	−0.008	(0.081)	−0.018	(0.081)	0.018	(0.083)
FB-NU	0.517***	(0.097)	0.503***	(0.097)	0.390***	(0.098)
Female	0.543***	(0.025)	0.504***	(0.025)	0.477***	(0.026)
Female*FB-U	−0.179**	(0.069)	−0.168*	(0.069)	−0.118	(0.073)
Female*FB-NU	−0.858***	(0.076)	−0.839***	(0.076)	−0.671***	(0.080)

Expected occ chars (centered at mean)
Occ MA			0.016***	(0.005)	0.014**	(0.005)
Occ Female			0.014***	(0.002)	0.015***	(0.002)
Occ FB			−0.033***	(0.007)	−0.043***	(0.008)

Interactions between Exp. Occ and Group
Occ MA*FB-U					−0.001	(0.014)
Occ MA*FB-NU					−0.009	(0.016)

Occ Female*FB-U					−0.002	(0.003)
Occ Female*FB-NU					−0.013***	(0.003)

Occ FB*FB-U					0.020	(0.014)
Occ FB*FB-NU					0.064***	(0.014)

Other adjustments
Demographic	Y		Y		Y
Immigration-related	Y		Y		Y
College background	Y		Y		Y

Notes: Log odds are shown; Robust standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Natives: US-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-U: foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-NU: foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree.

“Postgraduate pursuit” is defined as the pursuit of a master's degree in the U.S. within 5 years after college graduation, relative to no pursuit. N = 40,244.

“Demographic” includes race/ethnicity and parental education>=BA.

“Immigration-related” includes region of origin and visa at arrival.

“College background” includes age at college graduation, graduation periods (1995–2002, 2003–2007, 2008–2010), fields of study, sources of financial support, and double majored.

The full results are shown in supplemental materials.

Data Source: 2015 National Survey of College Graduates.

Regarding the association between expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit, three points are worth noting. First, occupational educational expectation was positively associated with pursuit of a master's degree. For every 10-percent increase in the educational expectation from the occupational mean, the odds of pursuit increased by 17 percent (=exp[0.016*10], p < .001), net of controls (M2). The positive association between occupational educational expectation and postgraduate pursuit suggests that the upward educational pressure in the occupational context may motivate college graduates to invest in a postgraduate degree to stay competitive. However, there was no group-differential effects, given the interaction terms were not statistically significant (M3, not supporting Hypothesis 1).

Second, occupational female concentration was positively associated with pursuit of a master's degree, which is consistent with Hypothesis 2. However, the positive relationship was stronger for natives than for foreign-educated immigrants. For example, for every 10-percent increase in the share of female workers from the occupational mean (M3), natives had 16-percent higher odds to pursue a master's degree (=exp[0.015*10], p < .001), compared to 2-percent higher odds for foreign-educated immigrants (=exp[(0.015−0.013)*10]). The differential effects between native and foreign-educated immigrants may imply that foreign-educated immigrants faced trade-offs between structural constraints associated with female-dominated occupations and their comparative advantage for skill utilization. For example, female-dominated occupations may be stereotyped as involving more “feminine” skills (e.g., specializing in communicative and interactive skills) and fewer “masculine” skills (e.g., mathematical, logical, and analytical) (see Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, and Lueptow 2001; Williams and Best 1990). Given that college-educated immigrants and natives are “imperfect substitutes” with different comparative advantage (Hanson and Liu 2018; Peri and Sparber 2011), immigrants may be less incentivized to invest if female-dominated occupations do not increase their comparative advantage.

Third, the association between occupational immigrant concentration and postgraduate pursuit differed between natives and foreign-educated immigrants (supporting Hypothesis 3). For every 5-percent increase in the share of foreign-born workers from the occupational mean, the odds of investment in a master's degree among natives decreased by 19 percent (=exp[−0.043*5], p < .001), but the odds for foreign-educated immigrants increased by 11 percent (=exp[(−0.043 + 0.064)*5], p < .001). These opposite directions (positive for foreign-educated immigrants and negative for natives) may imply the comparative advantage between these groups, where immigrants fill in occupations demanding a set of skills that natives lack (Peri and Sparber 2011; Schoellman 2010). It could also indicate that natives may be opting for other choices when their expected occupations are increasingly filled with immigrants (Han 2016; Xie and Killewald 2012). However, without information on occupation-specific requirements and the actual measurement of occupational skills, these findings should be interpreted with caution.

Variation by Field of Study and Visa at Arrival

How can we know that the postgraduate pursuit among college graduates represents a response to the expected occupational characteristics, when occupation-specific requirements may also affect this educational investment? Unfortunately, NSCG only provided information on one's current job, while 86 percent of respondents pursued a postgraduate degree before the current job. Therefore, we lack information on the respondent's occupation preceding postgraduate pursuit. To address the potential confounding effect from occupation-specific requirement on postgraduate pursuit, I examined whether the associations between expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit hold across undergraduate college majors that may represent different career tracks with occupation-specific requirements (Goyette and Mullen 2006; Roksa and Levey 2010). To ensure sufficient cell size for nativity-education comparison, I categorized fields of study into four groups⁴ based on two dimensions (Biglan 1973): (1) the paradigm consensus in which all members subscribe to a particular body of theory (social/behavioral sciences versus hard sciences) and (2) degree of utility (academic versus applied). Table 3 shows that the associations between three expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit generally held across fields, which implies the findings are not necessarily driven by certain fields with a particular career track. Nevertheless, there are two exceptions. First, the association between occupational educational expectation and postgraduate pursuit was negative in computer science/engineering/statistics fields. The lower likelihood of pursuing a master's degree in response to increasing occupational educational expectation in these fields may result from the smaller earning differential between a bachelor's degree and a graduate degree (a contrasting example is business or health, see Kim, Tamborni, and Sakamoto 2015) and warrants future investigation. Second, the negative association between immigrant concentration and postgraduate pursuit did not hold among natives majoring in business/education/health/other. Instead, US-born graduates were more likely to pursue postgraduate degrees even when facing higher immigrant concentrations. This finding is consistent with the previous literature on natives opting out for lucrative fields (Han 2016).

Table 3.

Postgraduate Pursuit by Fields of the Bachelor's Degree.

	Agri/bio/physical		CS/engineer/stats		Art/human/social		Bus/edu/health/other
Group (ref: Natives)
FB-U	−0.070	(0.243)	0.094	(0.220)	0.329	(0.327)	−0.685*	(0.335)
FB-NU	0.302	(0.292)	0.658**	(0.227)	1.280**	(0.434)	0.180	(0.364)

Female	0.244***	(0.061)	0.567***	(0.049)	0.477***	(0.044)	0.423***	(0.058)
Female*FB-U	−0.196	(0.186)	−0.228	(0.123)	−0.080	(0.133)	0.155	(0.192)
Female*FB-NU	−0.489*	(0.238)	−0.838***	(0.116)	−0.638**	(0.203)	−0.424*	(0.197)

Expected Occ
Occ MA	0.040*	(0.019)	−0.062**	(0.024)	0.021	(0.020)	0.037***	(0.008)
Occ MA*FB-U	−0.078	(0.060)	−0.003	(0.049)	0.012	(0.048)	−0.034	(0.025)
Occ MA*FB-NU	0.042	(0.060)	0.029	(0.050)	−0.035	(0.070)	−0.044	(0.028)

Occ Female	0.039**	(0.015)	0.013***	(0.003)	0.051***	(0.008)	0.010***	(0.003)
Occ Female*FB-U	0.064	(0.045)	−0.003	(0.007)	−0.021	(0.019)	0.007	(0.009)
Occ Female*FB-NU	−0.042	(0.047)	0.004	(0.007)	−0.064*	(0.026)	−0.031**	(0.010)

Occ FB	−0.070*	(0.034)	−0.082***	(0.013)	−0.047*	(0.018)	0.077***	(0.022)
Occ FB*FB-U	0.130	(0.078)	0.030	(0.028)	0.069	(0.047)	−0.052	(0.056)
Occ FB*FB-NU	0.228**	(0.086)	0.066**	(0.025)	0.182***	(0.055)	0.032	(0.059)

Observations	5977		14,186		11,731		8350
Obs. of Natives	4844		9565		9855		7044
Obs. of FB-U	645		2039		1349		778
Obs. of FB-NU	488		2582		527		528

Notes: All models have adjusted for demographic characteristics, college background, and immigration-related characteristics.

Log odds are shown; Robust standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Natives: US-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-U: Foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-NU: Foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree.

Data Source: 2015 National Survey of College Graduates.

Another concern pertains to selective return migration. We know that foreign-educated immigrants were more likely than US-educated immigrants to enter the US with temporary visas (e.g., student or temporary worker) and may face legal constraints in staying in the US on a long-term basis. Do the associations between expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit depend on the visa at arrival? Table 4 shows that, across all visa types, the association between each expected occupational characteristic and postgraduate pursuit generally held (although some interaction terms lost statistical significance due to reduced sample size). Moreover, the associations of expected occupational characteristics with postgraduate pursuit were particularly pronounced for those who came with permanent residency. Therefore, selective return migration may not necessarily drive this article's main findings, given that permanent residents had the legal right to stay and work in the US on a longer-term basis than temporary visa holders.

Table 4.

Postgraduate Pursuit by Visa at Arrival.

	Permanent Resident		Student/Temporary Worker		Dependent		Other
Nativity-education group (ref: Natives)
FB-U	0.317*	(0.125)	0.271	(0.142)	0.192	(0.181)	0.339*	(0.138)
FB-NU	−0.217	(0.191)	0.888***	(0.105)	−0.371	(0.275)	−0.128	(0.282)

Female	0.480***	(0.026)	0.477***	(0.026)	0.481***	(0.026)	0.480***	(0.026)
Female*FB-U	−0.125	(0.100)	−0.127	(0.156)	−0.265	(0.160)	−0.019	(0.148)
Female*FB-NU	−0.102	(0.225)	−0.431***	(0.099)	−0.059	(0.262)	−0.517	(0.362)

Expected Occ (centered)
Occ MA	0.014**	(0.005)	0.015**	(0.005)	0.013*	(0.005)	0.014**	(0.005)
Occ MA*FB-U	−0.008	(0.020)	0.029	(0.032)	0.070*	(0.034)	−0.049	(0.029)
Occ MA*FB-NU	−0.056	(0.040)	0.013	(0.021)	−0.010	(0.033)	−0.060	(0.081)

Occ Female	0.016***	(0.002)	0.014***	(0.002)	0.017***	(0.002)	0.016***	(0.002)
Occ Female*FB-U	−0.008*	(0.003)	−0.006	(0.005)	−0.000	(0.006)	0.006	(0.005)
Occ Female*FB-NU	−0.024***	(0.007)	−0.003	(0.003)	−0.006	(0.006)	−0.008	(0.012)

Occ FB	−0.045***	(0.008)	−0.042***	(0.008)	−0.047***	(0.008)	−0.045***	(0.008)
Occ FB*FB-U	0.021	(0.019)	0.002	(0.029)	0.000	(0.032)	0.046	(0.028)
Occ FB*FB-NU	0.074*	(0.037)	0.077***	(0.020)	0.025	(0.026)	0.103	(0.075)

Observations	33,994		35,015		32,696		32,463
Obs. of Natives	31,308		31,308		31,308		31,308
Obs. of FB-U	2216		876		753		966
Obs. of FB-NU	470		2831		635		189

Notes: All models have adjusted for demographic characteristics, college background, and immigration-related characteristics.

Log odds are shown; Robust standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Natives: US-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-U: Foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-NU: Foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree.

Data Source: 2015 National Survey of College Graduates.

Gender, Expected Occupational Characteristic, and Postgraduate Pursuit

Table 5 shifts the focus from a two-way interaction between expected occupational characteristics and nativity-education group to a three-way interaction with gender. Three findings are worth noting. First, net of adjustments for all covariates, women's odds of postgraduate pursuit were 63 percent higher than those of men among natives (p < .001), 43 percent higher among US-educated immigrants (p < .001), but 10 percent lower among foreign-educated immigrants (p = .30). Given that origin country represents varying degrees of gender egalitarianism (Blau et al. 2020; Read and Cohen 2007), women's lack of postgraduate pursuit was more salient among immigrants from Mexico, China, Taiwan, and India, but not among those from Canada and the Philippines⁵ (results not shown). However, when excluding immigrants holding temporary visas at arrival (students and temporary workers), foreign-educated immigrant women were associated with 41 percent higher odds of postgraduate pursuit compared to foreign-educated immigrant men (p < .001, results not shown). These findings point to the heterogeneity of gendered immigrant postgraduate pursuit by origin countries and immigration pathways (partial support for Hypothesis 4).

Table 5.

Gender Differences in Postgraduate Pursuit by Nativity-Education Group.

	Natives		FB-U		FB-NU
Female	0.491***	(0.026)	0.356***	(0.067)	−0.104	(0.100)
Expected occ chars (centered)
Occ MA	0.032***	(0.008)	0.024	(0.025)	−0.010	(0.031)
Occ MA*Female	−0.022**	(0.009)	−0.026	(0.027)	0.003	(0.036)

Occ Female	0.013***	(0.002)	0.005	(0.006)	−0.003	(0.006)
Occ Female*Female	0.003	(0.002)	0.012*	(0.005)	−0.003	(0.005)

Occ FB	−0.062***	(0.009)	−0.043	(0.024)	0.069*	(0.027)
Occ FB*Female	0.037***	(0.010)	0.036	(0.025)	−0.026	(0.028)
Demographic
Race/ethnicity (ref: White)
Black	0.224***	(0.042)	0.349*	(0.143)	−0.128	(0.316)
Hispanic	0.007	(0.033)	−0.169	(0.120)	−0.227	(0.255)
Asian	−0.196***	(0.052)	−0.150	(0.122)	−0.003	(0.164)
Parental educ>=BA	0.321***	(0.026)	0.191**	(0.065)	0.246**	(0.083)
College background
Age at college graduation	−0.042***	(0.003)	−0.047***	(0.007)	−0.061***	(0.017)
Graduation periods (ref: 2008–2010)
1995–2002	−0.073	(0.039)	−0.072	(0.101)	−0.023	(0.143)
2003–2007	0.543***	(0.029)	0.615***	(0.077)	0.268*	(0.122)
Fields of study (ref: CS/engr/stat)
Agri/bio/physical	−0.328***	(0.063)	−0.209	(0.164)	0.449*	(0.200)
Art/human/social sciences	−0.445***	(0.094)	−0.504*	(0.246)	0.119	(0.288)
Business/educ/health/other	−0.643***	(0.103)	−0.739**	(0.280)	−0.260	(0.325)
Sources of financial support
Parent	−0.003	(0.045)	0.094	(0.102)	0.260*	(0.121)
Loan	−0.161***	(0.042)	−0.118	(0.096)	0.082	(0.155)
Double majored	0.223***	(0.034)	0.404***	(0.086)	0.061	(0.122)
Immigration-related
Sending region (ref: Western)
Asia	–	–	−0.466***	(0.119)	0.230	(0.185)
Latin America/Africa	–	–	−0.196	(0.123)	−0.255	(0.258)
Visa at arrival (ref: PR)
Temporary worker	–	–	0.123	(0.199)	0.060	(0.136)
Student	–	–	0.675***	(0.094)	2.374***	(0.128)
Dependent	–	–	0.261**	(0.089)	0.290*	(0.139)
Other	–	–	0.005	(0.088)	−0.053	(0.206)
Constant	0.457***	(0.109)	0.842**	(0.291)	0.187	(0.504)
Observations	31,308		4811		4125
Obs. of men	14,807		2375		2321
Obs. of women	16,501		2436		1804

Notes: Log-odds are shown; Robust standard errors are applied (in parentheses)

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Natives: US-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-U: Foreign-born with a US bachelor's degree; FB-NU: Foreign-born with a non-US bachelor's degree.

“Postgraduate pursuit” is defined as the pursuit of a master's degree in the U.S. within 5 years after college graduation, relative to no pursuit.

Data Source: 2015 National Survey of College Graduates.

Second, focusing on the gender difference within immigrants holding a foreign degree, the association of immigrant occupational concentration and postgraduate pursuit was slightly weaker for women than for men (p = .36). This finding lends limited support for the expectation that immigrant-concentrated occupations may further constrain the role of education in improving labor market outcomes for foreign-educated immigrant women than their male counterparts. Third, comparing between immigrant women by the place of bachelor's degree, US-educated women were more likely than their foreign-educated women to invest in a master's degree when confronted with occupational female concentration (0.012 versus −0.003, log odds, p = .04). Such differential investment between these two groups suggests that a US bachelor's degree may open up employment opportunities for immigrant women, who could use a postgraduate degree to improve career prospect in female-dominated occupations. Taken together, these findings suggest that most of the associations between occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit were more immigration specific than gender specific. In other words, immigrant women and immigrant men tended to respond to the expected occupational characteristics in similar ways.

Discussion

This article focused on an understudied outcome in skilled immigrants’ labor market integration—the pursuit of a US master's degree—and examined its associations with three expected occupational characteristics among immigrants and natives and between women and men. Compared to much previous research on immigrants’ education–occupation mismatch, wage penalty and the “crowding-out” impact on natives (Borjas 2005; Lu and Li 2022; Zeng and Xie 2004), investing in a US postgraduate degree may represent the first step to narrowing education–occupation mismatch, improving labor market rewards, and exerting influence on the native-born population.

Do immigrants make more human capital investment than natives, as posited in the IHCI model (Duleep and Regets 1999)? Contrary to the expectation, this article found that foreign-educated immigrants, except those who entered the US holding student or temporary worker visas, were less likely to invest in a postgraduate degree than natives, net of demographic, college background and immigration-related characteristics. In contrast, immigrants holding a US bachelor's degree were more likely than natives to invest in a master's degree. Such unexpected nativity-education disparity in postgraduate pursuit runs counter to the prediction of the IHCI model (Duleep and Regets 1999), which posits that immigrants, especially those with lower skill transferability (e.g., immigrants with a foreign bachelor's degree), will invest more in human capital than natives and immigrants with higher skill transferability (e.g., immigrants with a US bachelor's degree). In general, the findings in this article are consistent with a number of studies adopting a barrier perspective to understand the lower likelihood of making educational investment among immigrants with lower skill transferability (van Tubergen and van de Werfhorst 2007; Muñoz-Comet and Miyar-Busto 2018). Specifically, immigrants with limited skill transferability may also lack linguistic proficiency and knowledge of the host country's educational system, and face administrative/legal challenges that increase the uncertainty of returns to educational investment (Muñoz-Comet and Miyar-Busto 2018; Hsin and Reed 2020). As a result, despite of the lower opportunity costs and greater perceived returns (as posited in the IHCI model), immigrants with lower skill transferability may not necessarily make more human capital investment than those with higher transferability and natives.

More importantly, this article makes a contribution to IHCI literature by bringing the role of host country's occupational contexts into educational decisions. As it demonstrates, expected occupational characteristics were not only associated with the pursuit of a postgraduate degree but also affected natives and immigrants in different ways, which helped explain nativity-education group difference in postgraduate pursuit. For example, the occupational share of workers with advanced degrees was positively associated with postgraduate pursuit for immigrants and natives in a similar way. However, the positive association between occupational female concentration and postgraduate pursuit was stronger for natives than for foreign-educated immigrants. By contrast, the occupational share of foreign-born workers was negatively associated with postgraduate pursuit among natives (except those with majors in business/education/ health/other) but positively among foreign-educated immigrants. These differential occupational effects on postgraduate pursuit suggest that college graduates may invest in a postgraduate degree when they could use it to maximize their comparative advantage for skill utilization (Hanson and Liu 2018) and break structural constraints for career enhancement (Han 2016; Monaghan and Jang 2017).

More broadly, adopting a structural perspective on IHCI enriches the understanding of the remaining nativity and within-immigrant disparity in postgraduate pursuit, especially when workers share similar skill background and other individual-level characteristics. For example, labor market demands and rewards embedded in occupational structure generate incentives and constraints for all college graduates in the decision of postgraduate pursuit, regardless of the concerns of skill transferability. Even among workers with similar skill background and legal constraint (e.g., subgroup by field of study and by visa at arrival), their postgraduate decisions were associated with their expected occupational contexts. In the United States, the shifting economic landscape through the rapid acceleration of knowledge production and growing employment opportunities in professional service may require college graduates to constantly retool their skills (Kalleberg 2011). The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected the master's degree to be the fastest-growing typical entry-level education during the 2014–2024 period (Watson 2017). As a result, pursuing a postgraduate degree is not just about facilitating skill transfer for foreign-educated immigrants but also about labor market success for the overall college-educated workforce, including natives and US-educated immigrants.

Further, this article provides nuanced findings on immigrant gendered human capital investment, where college-educated immigrant women, including those holding a foreign bachelor's degree (except those with student or temporary worker visa), outpaced their immigrant male counterparts in postgraduate pursuit. This finding is inconsistent with the family investment model, which argues that women prioritize men's human capital investment (Duleep and Sanders 1993; Long 1980). Further, the effects of expected occupational characteristics on postgraduate pursuit varied more by immigration status than by gender, implying that immigration status may function as an overarching status than gender in shaping postgraduate decisions. This suggests that we need to adopt a structural perspective from the host country's occupational context to understand gender disparity in immigrant educational investment.

Several important caveats are as follows. First, the associations between the expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit should not be interpreted as causal. Given that NSCG did not have information of one's actual occupation before postgraduate education, this article used the expected occupational characteristics, or occupational characteristics linked to the field of study of the bachelor's degree, to capture the varying opportunities and constraints in the labor market by the time of college graduation. Although the associations between the expected occupational characteristics and postgraduate pursuit were generally robust by broad fields of the bachelor's degree and visas at arrival, this analysis cannot rule out omitted variable bias from occupation-specific requirements and other labor market conditions that simultaneously shape the pursuit of a postgraduate degree. Moreover, the article is unable to establish the causal direction and disentangle occupational sorting of advanced degree holders into certain occupations from occupational contextual feedback on postgraduate decisions. Although the findings presented here are more descriptive than causal, this article does represent an important step in linking macrolevel occupational structure with immigrant postgraduate investment and sheds light on nativity disparity, which joins the line of research on the interplay between structural contexts and individual educational decisions (Ma 2011; Xie and Shauman 1997). Second, this article did not directly deal with selection, given that all respondents were living in the US. Immigrants could be selected in terms of migration, return migration, and the decision to make further educational investment. Although several steps were performed to mitigate these issues, we cannot rule out omitted variable bias from unobserved characteristics (e.g., ability, motivation, types of skills) between natives and immigrants. Third, this article did not have information on immigrants’ marital status and the presence of children at the time of postgraduate pursuit. Competing responsibilities related to family and childcare may affect educational investment in gendered ways (Liversage 2009). Nevertheless, the analysis highlighted the heterogeneity of immigrants by place of college education and visa at arrival. As migration, postgraduate investment, and family formation may cooccur after college graduation, future research will benefit from marital history data to understand the gendered process in postgraduate pursuit among immigrants and natives and directly test the relevance of the Family Investment Model (Long 1980).

Beyond the US context, whether the associations between occupational contexts and postgraduate pursuit hold remains an open question. The answer may depend on the size of knowledge economy, the targeted immigration policy and occupational sorting of skilled immigrants, the accessibility of host country's educational system, and the value of a postgraduate education in improving labor market outcomes (Cantalini, Guetto, and Panichella 2022; Hao 2013; Lu and Hou 2020). For example, the inclusion of skilled immigrants into low-skilled occupations in Italy's large underground economy may limit the returns to further educational investment (Panichella, Avola, and Piccitto 2021). Therefore, we may see that occupational immigrant concentration is negatively associated with postgraduate pursuit for skilled immigrants if the only occupations available to them do not reward educational investment. Similarly, Canada has one-tenth size of the US economy, a less knowledge-intensive structure, and an oversupply of college-educated immigrants through the point system (Baldwin and Willox 2016). Investing a postgraduate degree may not necessarily solve the underemployment issue in Canada, given the mismatch between domestic labor-market demand and the supply of college-educated workers (Lu and Hou 2020). By contrast, the US economy has undergone vast transformation with fastest job growth in occupations demanding higher education (Pew Research Center 2016). The contrast between the United States and Canada again demonstrates that we must take into account the occupational contexts from the demand side to understand immigrants’ decision in making further educational investment.

A fruitful next step for immigrant labor market integration is to examine whether investment in a US postgraduate degree serves as an effective strategy to obtain adequate employment and whether returns to postgraduate education differ along nativity and gender lines. These future directions will provide timely evidence for the realization of postgraduate investment in dealing with labor market constraints and subsequent labor market stratification within the college-educated workforce.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-mrx-10.1177_01979183231162623 - Supplemental material for Expected Occupational Contexts and Postgraduate Pursuit among Skilled Immigrants and Natives in the United States

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-mrx-10.1177_01979183231162623 for Expected Occupational Contexts and Postgraduate Pursuit among Skilled Immigrants and Natives in the United States by Xiao Yu in International Migration Review

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Xiao Yu

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

References

Akresh

I. R.

2006. “Occupational Mobility among Legal Immigrants to the United States.” International Migration Review 40(4): 854–84.

Akresh

I. R.

. 2007. “U.S. Immigrants’ Labor Market Adjustment: Additional Human Capital Investment and Earnings Growth.” Demography 44(4): 865–81.

Arbeit

C. A.

Warren

J. R.

. 2013. “Labor Market Penalties for Foreign Degrees among College Educated Immigrants.” Social Science Research 42(3): 852–71.

Ashworth Ransom . 2019. “Has the College Wage Premium Continued to Rise? Evidence from Multiple U.S. Surveys.” Economics of Education Review 69: 149–54.

Autor

D. H.

2014. “Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality among the ‘Other 99 Percent.’” Science (New York, N.Y.) 344(6186): 843–51.

Baldwin

J. R.

Willox

. 2016. “The Industry Origins of Canada’s Weaker Labour Productivity Performance and the Role of Structural Adjustment in the 1990s and the 2000s.” Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 373. Statistics Canada Catalogue, 11F0019 M, Ottawa, ON.

Batalova

Fix

. 2021. Leaving Money on the Table: The Persistence of Brain Waste among College-Educated Immigrants. Washington, DC: Migration Policy.

Biglan

1973. “Relationships Between Subject Matter Characteristics and the Structure and Output of University Departments.” Journal of Applied Psychology 57: 195–203.

Blau

F. D.

Brummund

Liu

A. Y-H.

. 2013. “Trends in Occupational Segregation by Gender 1970–2009: Adjusting for the Impact of Changes in the Occupational Coding System.” Demography 50(2): 471–92.

10.

Blau

F. D.

Kahn

L. M.

Comey

Eng

Meyerhofer

Willén

. 2020. “Culture and Gender Allocation of Tasks: Source Country Characteristics and the Division of non-Market Work among US Immigrants.” Review of Economics of the Household, Springer 18(4): 907–58, December.

11.

Bol

2015. “Has Education Become More Positional? Educational Expansion and Labour Market Outcomes, 1985–2007.” Acta Sociologica 58(2): 105–20.

12.

Bol

Eller

C. C.

van de Werfhorst

H. G.

DiPrete

T. A.

. 2019. “School-to-Work Linkages, Educational Mismatches, and Labor Market Outcomes.” American Sociological Review 84(2): 275–307.

13.

Borjas

G. J.

2005. “The Labor-Market Impact of High-Skill Immigration.” The American Economic Review 95(2): 56–60.

14.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2018. “Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics—2018.”

15.

Campbell

Horowitz

. 2016. “Does College Influence Sociopolitical Attitudes?” Sociology of Education 89(1): 40–58.

16.

Cantalini

Guetto

Panichella

. 2023. “Ethnic Wage Penalty and Human Capital Transferability: A Comparative Study of Recent Migrants in 11 European Countries.” International Migration Review 57(1): 328–56.

17.

Chiswick

C. U.

1989. “The Impact of Immigration on the Human Capital of Natives.” Journal of Labor Economics 7(4): 464–86.

18.

Chiswick

B. R.

Miller

P. W.

. 1994. “The Determinants of Post-Immigration Investments in Education.” Economics of Education Review 13: 163–77.

19.

Cobb-Clark

Connolly

M. D.

Worswick

. 2005. “Post-Migration Investments in Education and Job Search: A Family Perspective.” Journal of Population Economics 18(4): 663–90.

20.

Cohen

P. N.

Huffman

M. L.

. 2003. “Occupational Segregation and the Devaluation of Women’s Work Across U.S. Labor Markets.” Social Forces 81(3): 881–908.

21.

DiPrete

T. A.

Bol

Eller

C. C.

van de Werfhorst

H. G.

. 2017. “School-to-Work Linkages in the United States, Germany, and France.” American Journal of Sociology 122(6): 1869–938.

22.

Donato

K. M.

Piya

Jacobs

. 2014. “The Double Disadvantage Reconsidered: Gender, Immigration, Marital Status, and Global Labor Force Participation in the 21st Century.” International Migration Review 48(1): 335–76.

23.

Duleep

H. O.

Regets

M. C.

. 1999. “Immigrants and Human-Capital Investment.” American Economic Review 89(2): 186–91.

24.

Duleep

H. O.

Sanders

. 1993. “The Decision to Work by Married Immigrant Women.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 46(4): 677–90.

25.

Espenshade

2001. “High-end Immigrants and the Shortage of Skilled Labor.” Population Research and Policy Review 20(1–2): 135–41.

26.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 2020. “The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates.” https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/index.html.

27.

Flippen

C. A.

Parrado

E. A.

. 2015. “A Tale of Two Contexts: U.S. Migration and the Labor Force Trajectories of Mexican Women.” International Migration Review 49(1): 232–59.

28.

Friedberg

R. M.

2000. “You Can’t Take it with You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital.” Journal of Labor Economics 18(2): 221–51.

29.

Gaddis

S. M.

2015. “Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market.” Social Forces 93(4): 1451–59.

30.

Goldin

Katz

L. F.

. 2010. The Race Between Education and Technology. Illustrated edition. Cambridge, MA/London, England: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press.

31.

Gonzalez

H. B.

Kuenzi

J. J.

. 2012. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education: A Primer. Washington, DC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

32.

Goyette

K. A.

Mullen

A. L.

. 2006. “Who Studies the Arts and Sciences? Social Background and the Choice and Consequences of Undergraduate Field of Study.” The Journal of Higher Education 77(3): 497–538.

33.

Hall

Farkas

. 2008. “Does Human Capital Raise Earnings for Immigrants in the Low-Skill Labor Market?” Demography 45: 619–39.

34.

Han

2016. “Staying in STEM or Changing Course: Do Natives and Immigrants Pursue the Path of Least Resistance?” Social Science Research 58(July): 165–83.

35.

Hanson

G. H.

Liu

. 2018. High-Skilled Immigration and the Comparative Advantage of Foreign-Born Workers Across US Occupations. High-Skilled Migration to the United States and Its Economic Consequences. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

36.

Hao

2013. “Admission-Group Salary Differentials in the United States: The Significance of the Labour-Market Institutional Selection of High-Skilled Workers.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(8): 1337–60.

37.

Horowitz

2018. “Relative Education and the Advantage of a College Degree.” American Sociological Review 83(4): 771–801.

38.

Hsin

Reed

H. E.

. 2020. “The Academic Performance of Undocumented Students in Higher Education in the United States.” International Migration Review 54(1) 289–315.

39.

Kalleberg

A. L.

2011. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s–2000s. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

40.

Kalleberg

A. L.

Mouw

. 2018. “Occupations, Organizations, and Intragenerational Career Mobility.” Annual Review of Sociology 44: 283–303.

41.

Kim

C. H.

Tamborni

C. R.

Sakamoto

. 2015. “Field of Study in College and Lifetime Earnings in the United States.” Sociology of Education 88(4): 320–39.

42.

Lancee

Bol

. 2017. “The Transferability of Skills and Degrees: Why the Place of Education Affects Immigrant Earnings.” Social Forces 96(2): 1–26.

43.

Liversage

2009. “Vital Conjunctures, Shifting Horizons: High-Skilled Female Immigrants Looking for Work.” Work, Employment and Society 23(1): 120–41.

44.

Long

J. E.

1980. “The Effect of Americanization on Earnings: Some Evidence for Women.” Journal of Political Economy 88(3): 620–29.

45.

Hou

. 2020. “Immigration System, Labor Market Structures, and Overeducation of High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States and Canada.” International Migration Review 54(4): 1072–103.

46.

. 2022. “Vertical Education–Occupation Mismatch and Wage Inequality by Race/Ethnicity and Nativity among Highly Educated US Workers.” Social Forces 100(2): 1072–1103.

47.

Lueptow

L. B.

Garovich-Szabo

Lueptow

M. B.

. 2001. “Social Change and The Persistence of Sex Typing: 1974–1997.” Social Forces 80(1): 1–36.

48.

2011. “College major Choice, Occupational Structure and Demographic Patterning by Gender, Race and Nativity.” The Social Science Journal 48: 112–29.

49.

Mandel

2018. “A Second Look at the Process of Occupational Feminization and Pay Reduction in Occupations.” Demography 55(2): 669–90.

50.

McHenry

2015. “Immigration and the Human Capital of Natives.” The Journal of Human Resources 50(1): 34–71.

51.

Monaghan

Jang

S. H.

. 2017. “Major Payoffs: Postcollege Income, Graduate School, and the Choice of ‘Risky’ Undergraduate Majors.” Sociological Perspectives 60(4): 722–46.

52.

Muñoz-Comet

Miyar-Busto

. 2018. “Limitations on the Human Capital Transferability of Adult Migrants in Spain: Incentive or Barrier for a New Investment in Education?” European Journal of Education 53: 586–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12308

53.

National Science Board. 2018. Science and Engineering Indicators 2018. NSB-2018-1. Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation.

54.

Okahana

Zhou

. 2018. Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2007 to 2017. Washington, DC: Council of Graduate Schools.

55.

Olsen-Medina

Batalova

. 2020. College-Educated Immigrants in the United States. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.

56.

Panichella

Avola

Piccitto

. 2021. “Migration, Class Attainment and Social Mobility: An Analysis of Migrants’ Socio-Economic Integration in Italy.” European Sociological Review 37(6):883–98.

57.

Peri

Sparber

. 2011. “Highly Educated Immigrants and Native Occupational Choice.” Industrial Relations 50(3): 385–411.

58.

Petersen

Morgan

L. A.

. 1995. “Separate and Unequal: Occupation-Establishment Sex Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap.” American Journal of Sociology 101(2): 329–65.

59.

Pew Research Center. October, 2016. “The State of American Jobs: How the Shifting Economic Landscape is Reshaping Work and Society and Affecting the way People Think About the Skills and Training They Need to get Ahead.”

60.

Phan

M. B.

Banerjee

Deacon

Taraky

. 2015. “Family Dynamics and the Integration of Professional Immigrants in Canada.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41(13): 2061–80.

61.

Portes

Böröcz

. 1989. “Contemporary Immigration: Theoretical Perspectives on Its Determinants and Modes of Incorporation.” International Migration Review 23(3): 606–30.

62.

Portes

Rumbaut

R. G.

. 1990. Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

63.

Posselt

J. R.

Grodsky

. 2017. “Graduate Education and Social Stratification.” Annual Review of Sociology 43(1): 353–78.

64.

Powell

W. W.

Snellman

. 2004. “The Knowledge Economy.” Annual Review of Sociology 30(1): 199–220.

65.

Read

J. G.

Cohen

P. N.

. 2007. “One Size Fits All? Explaining U.S.-Born and Immigrant Women’s Employment Across 12 Ethnic Groups.” Social Forces 85(4): 1713–34.

66.

Reskin

. 1993. “Sex Segregation in the Workplace.” Annual Review of Sociology 19: 241–70. https://www-jstor-org.web.bisu.edu.cn/stable/2083388

67.

Risman

B. J.

2004. “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism.” Gender and Society 18(4): 429–50.

68.

Roksa

Levey

. 2010. “What Can You Do with That Degree? College Major and Occupational Status of College Graduates Over Time.” Social Forces 89(2): 389–415.

69.

Schoellman

2010. “The Occupations and Human Capital of U.S. Immigrants.” Journal of Human Capital 4(1): 1–34.

70.

Seibert

Kraimer

Holtom

B. C.

Pierotti

A. J.

. 2013. “Even the Best Laid Plans Sometimes Go Askew: Career Self-Management Processes, Career Shocks, and the Decision to Pursue Graduate Education.” The Journal of Applied Psychology 98(1): 169–82.

71.

Snyder

T. D.

de Brey

Dillow

S. A.

. 2018. Digest of Education Statistics, 2016. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

72.

Tang

2000. Doing Engineering: The Career Attainment and Mobility of Caucasian, Black, and Asian-American Engineers. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

73.

Tomaskovic-Devey

Skaggs

. 2002. “Sex Segregation, Labor Process Organization, and Gender Earnings Inequality.” American Journal of Sociology 108(1): 102–28.

74.

Tong

2010. “Place of Education, Gender Disparity, and Assimilation of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers’ Earnings.” Social Science Research 39(4): 610–26.

75.

Valletta

R. G.

2019. “Recent Flattening in the Higher Education Wage Premium: Polarization, Skill Downgrading, or Both?” In Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth. National Bureau of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth, volume 77, 313–342. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

76.

van Tubergen

van de Werfhorst

. 2007. “Postimmigration Investments in Education: A Study of Immigrants in the Netherlands.” Demography 44(4): 883–98.

77.

Watson

A. L.

2017. “Employment Trends by Typical Entry-Level Education Requirement.” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 2017.

78.

Williams

J. E.

Best

D. L.

. 1990. Measuring Sex Stereotypes: A Multination Study. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

79.

Witteeveen

2021. “Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry.” Sociology of Education 94(2): 103–23.

80.

Xie

Killewald

A. A.

. 2012. Is American Science in Decline?. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press.

81.

Xie

Shauman

K. A.

. 1997. “Modeling the Sex-Typing of Occupational Choice. Influences of Occupational Structure.” Sociological Methods & Research 26(2): 233–61.

82.

Zeng

Xie

. 2004. “Asian-Americans’ Earnings Disadvantage Reexamined: The Role of Place of Education.” American Journal of Sociology 109(5): 1075–108.

83.

Zwysen

2019. “Different Patterns of Labor Market Integration by Migration Motivation in Europe: The Role of Host Country Human Capital.” International Migration Review 53(1): 59–89.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.03 MB