The roles of parenting styles and social capital in the school performance of immigrant Asian and Hispanic adolescents

Objective. This study investigates the role of parenting styles and social capital (parental involvement, intergenerational closure, expectation, and trust) in accounting for school performance among ethnic groups and across immigrant generations. Methods. Using data from the Adolescent Health Survey, we estimate fixed-effects models to analyze students' grade-point averages. We compare three generations of Asian students and three generations of Hispanic students to the third-generation (native born with native parents) white students. Results. We find significant differences by both race/ethnicity and generational status in parenting styles and forms of social capital. However, while family socioeconomic status (SES) accounts for the achievement gap between foreign-born Hispanic and the third-generation white students, parenting styles and forms of social capital do not moderate any ethnic-generational differences. Conclusions. Family influences, apart from SES, cannot explain ethnicity-generation differences in school grades among Hispanic and Asian adolescents. This study provides conceptual clarification and empirical evidence for the significant but independent association between students' school grades and parenting styles on the one hand, and social capital on the other.