Immigrants’ Educational Attainment in the U.S. and Eighth District: An Update
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In the U.S., the share of native-born with only a high school diploma is larger than that of immigrants, both nationwide and in the Fed’s Eighth District, but the opposite is true for graduate degrees.
- Nationwide, the shares of U.S.-born and immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree were higher in 2024 than they were in 2018, rising 4.4 percentage points and 3.8 percentage points, respectively.
- In the Eighth District, the share of U.S.-born with at least a bachelor’s degree increased broadly between 2018 and 2024, but no such clear pattern emerged among immigrants.
A 2020 Regional Economist article looked at the educational attainment of immigrants nationally and in the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District using 2018 American Community Survey data for adults 22 and older. This blog post updates that analysis, using data from the 2024 survey and focusing exclusively on a group of selected Eighth District metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), rather than on Eighth District states as a whole, because state-level data include many non-District communities.Headquartered in St. Louis, the Eighth Federal Reserve District covers all of Arkansas, most of Missouri, and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. Because of data limitations, the 2020 article we mention reported information for the entirety of these seven states. In this blog post, we limit our analysis to 14 Eighth District MSAs for which relevant data are available. We refer to these 14 MSAs as selected District MSAs. Digging deeper, we report U.S.-born and immigrant educational attainment levels for a subset of the selected MSAs; specifically, we examine the four largest metro areas in the Eighth District. At various points, we provide comparisons between our current findings and those of the 2020 article.
Educational Attainment: U.S. and Selected Eighth District MSAs
The selected Eighth District MSAs show a higher share of immigrants without a high school diploma compared with native-born. (See the figure below.) This closely reflects the pattern for the nation as a whole, except that the share of foreign-born without a high school diploma at the District level is 2.6 percentage points lower than that for the nation. Bachelor’s degree attainment is similar between U.S.-born and immigrants in the selected District MSAs, with a difference of only 0.4 percentage points. At the national level, the gap in bachelor’s degree attainment between U.S.-born and immigrants is 2.9 percentage points. Interestingly, 19.2% of immigrants in the selected MSAs have graduate degrees, exceeding the 16% of immigrants with graduate degrees across the nation as a whole. In addition, the percentage of foreign-born with graduate degrees in the selected District MSAs exceeds the corresponding rate among U.S.-born by 6 percentage points. These features largely preserve the findings in the 2020 article: Immigrants show relatively high percentages at the lowest and highest ranges of the educational attainment spectrum.
The median personal income of U.S.-born exceeds that of immigrants both in the selected Eighth District MSAs and nationally, though the gap is somewhat narrower at the District level when compared with the nation.
For the purpose of an apples-to-apples comparison between 2018 and 2024, we repeated the calculations used to create the figure above with 2018 data.Download the 2018 data used in this analysis, which reflect the selected MSAs for that year rather than the state-level numbers in the 2020 article. An interesting observation from this comparison is that the proportions of the U.S.-born and the immigrant populations with at least a bachelor’s degree were higher in 2024 compared with 2018 for the nation as a whole. Turning to the selected Eighth District MSAs, the corresponding educational attainment increased between 2018 and 2024 for U.S.-born, while remaining roughly the same for immigrants.
At the national level, the gap in median personal income (in constant 2024 dollars) between U.S.-born and immigrants rose by about 8% from 2018 to 2024; the income gap between native-born and foreign-born increased more modestly in selected District MSAs, about 2%.
Educational Attainment: Four Largest Eighth District Metro Areas
The following table lists educational attainment and median personal income for the four largest MSAs in the Eighth District: Little Rock, Ark.; Louisville, Ky.; Memphis, Tenn.; and St. Louis. Among these four MSAs, St. Louis has the largest median personal income for both U.S.-born and immigrants. The St. Louis MSA also shows a modestly larger proportion of U.S.-born with at least a bachelor’s degree (the sum of the bachelor’s degree and graduate degree columns in the table) compared with the other three MSAs, and it has a significantly larger proportion of immigrants with that level of educational attainment. The personal income gap between U.S.-born and immigrants is largest in the Little Rock MSA, which is a bit puzzling given that its educational attainment levels for immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree do not display a marked difference from those in Memphis,The similar shares of immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree in the two MSAs mean they also have similar shares of immigrants with no more than a high school diploma. Also, notice that the native-born in these two MSAs have similar attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree at 35% (Little Rock) and 33% (Memphis). which has a modest U.S.-born-to-immigrant personal income gap.
| Highest Level of Education Attained | Median Personal Income (Nominal Dollars) | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No High School Diploma | High School Diploma | Bachelor’s Degree | Graduate Degree | |||||||||
| Native-Born | Foreign-Born | Native-Born | Foreign-Born | Native-Born | Foreign-Born | Native-Born | Foreign-Born | Native-Born | Foreign-Born | |||
| Little Rock | 7% | 17% | 58% | 48% | 23% | 20% | 12% | 14% | $40,000 | $25,000 | ||
| Louisville | 7% | 26% | 60% | 36% | 21% | 24% | 13% | 14% | $40,000 | $33,400 | ||
| Memphis | 8% | 26% | 59% | 39% | 21% | 19% | 12% | 16% | $37,000 | $35,400 | ||
| St. Louis | 6% | 14% | 56% | 34% | 23% | 25% | 14% | 28% | $43,000 | $40,500 | ||
| SOURCES: 2024 American Community Survey and authors’ calculations. | ||||||||||||
Finally, comparing educational attainment in the Eighth District’s four largest MSAs in 2024 with that in 2018 reveals a pattern discussed earlier: Each MSA shows an increase in 2024 of the proportion of the U.S.-born population with at least a bachelor’s degree.The 2018 data used here are available in the 2020 article. However, the picture is less uniform for immigrants, with Memphis showing a decline in 2024 relative to 2018 in the proportion of immigrants who hold at least a bachelor’s degree.
Conclusion
Reflecting earlier work, we find that the proportions of immigrants at opposite ends of the educational spectrum—those without high school diplomas and those who hold graduate degrees—exceed the corresponding proportions for the native-born population, both in the U.S. and in Eighth District MSAs. Interestingly, between 2018 and 2024, we find the proportion of U.S.-born with at least a college degree increased, but no such clear pattern can be observed among immigrants.
Notes
- Headquartered in St. Louis, the Eighth Federal Reserve District covers all of Arkansas, most of Missouri, and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. Because of data limitations, the 2020 article we mention reported information for the entirety of these seven states. In this blog post, we limit our analysis to 14 Eighth District MSAs for which relevant data are available. We refer to these 14 MSAs as selected District MSAs.
- Download the 2018 data used in this analysis, which reflect the selected MSAs for that year rather than the state-level numbers in the 2020 article.
- The similar shares of immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree in the two MSAs mean they also have similar shares of immigrants with no more than a high school diploma. Also, notice that the native-born in these two MSAs have similar attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree at 35% (Little Rock) and 33% (Memphis).
- The 2018 data used here are available in the 2020 article.
Citation
Subhayu Bandyopadhyay and Hoang Le, ldquoImmigrants’ Educational Attainment in the U.S. and Eighth District: An Update,rdquo St. Louis Fed On the Economy, April 30, 2026.
This blog offers commentary, analysis and data from our economists and experts. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.
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