27
that “economic literacy,” largely a product of higher education, accounts for a component of the general
education effect on attitudes toward immigration that is quite separate from cultural predictors.
Overall, the measured differences in cultural values and economic literacy across respondents
thus appear to account for some 65% of the uncontrolled education effect. The residual education effect is
even further reduced (and falls to 0.10) once we also add our skill345 proxy to the model (column 8).
Presumably the remaining education effect either reflects some other type of causal relationship between
education and feelings about immigration that we have not yet considered, or it reflects relevant
dimensions of cultural values and beliefs and knowledge not captured by the available indicators.
VI. Robustness Tests
One possibility we have also examined is that the connection noted above between education
levels and cultural variables like racism and tolerance might itself be, at least in part, a function of labor-
market concerns. Perhaps fear of competition for jobs with foreigners and minorities makes less-educated
individuals generally more racist and less tolerant, and thus more opposed to immigration, without regard
for how likely it is that particular types of immigrants will actually compete for the same jobs as them. To
test this idea, we examined whether the effects of education (or skill) levels on racism and tolerance
among respondents in the labor force differ significantly from the effects of these variables among those
not currently in the labor force. If the connection is influenced by concerns about labor market
competition, it should be significantly stronger among those currently in the labor force than among other
groups. We again split the ESS sample according to whether people are currently in “paid work” or not
and then estimated levels of the racist, antihate, and multicultural variables using educational attainment
and skill345 as predictors for both sub-samples. We found no significant difference in the size or
significance of the estimated effects of education and skills on these cultural variables across the sub-
samples. This finding strongly suggests that concerns about job competition are not a primary factor in
explaining the connection between education levels and racism or tolerance.
44
44
Full results from all sensitivity tests reported here are available in a supplement to this paper from the authors, and
can be downloaded at: <<
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/kssgorg/AustrianGerman/HH2004ImmigPref.htm
>>
Convention