EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY ON THE URBAN FRONTIER - NATIVITY, WEALTH, AND SCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN EARLY CHICAGO

In 1860 Chicago was the scene of extraordinary expansion. Its population had grown from 30 000 in 1850 to 110 000 in 1860, in large part, a result of its attractiveness to immigrants. Among thse were immigrants from a dozen foreign countries. Quantitatively, the dominant groups were Germans, and Irish, who together made up more than three-quarters of Chicago's foreign-born in 1860. This article focuses on the school attendance of the male children of these two groups, comparing their experience with that of the children of the native-born. The regression estimates reveal that the direct effects of ethnicity were generally unimportant. At comparable levels of family wealth, fathers of Irish and German nativity were no less likely than their American counterparts to send their children to school. Analysis of school attendance in early Chicago offers no evidence of an alienation of immigrants from public schools or of a lower valuation of formal education by immigrants. The econometric analysis found that family wealth had a considerable impact on the school attendance of boys at all ages. Families worth more than the median level of wealth were more likely to send their sons to school than were those who held modest or ngeligible amounts of wealth. -from Author