Economica (1999) 66, 63–77 Staying on in Full-Time Education: Reasons for Higher Participation Rates Among Ethnic Minority Males and Females By DEREK LESLIE and STEPHEN DRINKWATER Manchester Metroplitan University and University of Portsmouth Final version received 2 March 1998. Individuals from ethnic minorities have a greater tendency to stay on in full-time education beyond the compulsory age. There are, however, wide variations between groups, and the paper explores the role for human capital considerations such as earnings and increased employability in this choice. Economic considerations and socioeconomic background are found to be important, but there is evidence for a separate ethnicity effect influencing choice. The method used is to fit a joint leaving and employment equation for males and females aged 18–24 using combined micro data from the British Labour Force Survey and the Sample of Anonymized Records from the 1991 Census. INTRODUCTION A striking feature of the British youth labour market has been the rapid expan- sion in further and higher education. Higher participation has been particularly noticeable among non-whites. 1 The 1991 Census showed that 38·4% of non- white British-born 16–24-year-olds were in full-time education, compared with around 24·2% of whites, but there is considerable variation between different ethnic minority groups. For example, Black Caribbean staying-on rates are somewhat lower than white staying-on rates, whereas Chinese rates are particu- larly high. The question addressed here is how much of these differential rates can be attributed to observed economic factors, and whether there is an identi- fiable ethnicity effect operating over and above these human capital consider- ations to explain the higher staying on rates. Given that education and qualifications are identified as an important route through which upward intergenerational mobility can occur, there is a poten- tially optimistic story to tell here about assimilation. 2 A better qualified ethnic minority workforce, which will be increasingly dominated by the British-born, may overcome some of the earnings disadvantages and the much higher unem- ployment rates of their mainly foreign-born parents. In contrast to this optimism, there is a more negative view, which says that these higher participation rates are the result of discrimination elsewhere. The claim is that ethnic minorities are being pushed into education, rather than being there because of separate pull factors. Hagell and Shaw (1996) also make the telling point that the push factor arises not only from higher unemployment rates but also from an awareness of racism, even if work is found. Thus edu- cation becomes a holding device and need not be translated into better jobs; Gregory and Hunter (1995) found this to be the case in Australia. This paper presents and estimates a simple human capital model to try and identify the economic push and pull factors that might explain ethnic vari- ations in participation in education. This will be done separately for males and  The London School of Economics and Political Science 1999