Material deprivation explains only part of immigrant educational underachievement.

Evidence

The study confirms that the gap in achievement can in part be explained by differences in material conditions. For example, whereas the vast majority of German children have their own bedrooms and thus have a quiet place for study, over 80% of Muslim children share bedrooms and lack a place for completing homework or engaging in reading undisturbed. At the same time, however, more than half of non-German young people have a television in their bedrooms, compared with fewer than a third of their German counter-parts. 10• Differences in material conditions can only explain part of the difference in behavior. More significant are the different patterns of behavior that arc cultural inheritances passed down from generation to generation. — Michael A. Reynolds and Thomas D. Grant, The Future of Europe and Its Muslims, 97

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on how household material conditions (own bedroom, quiet study space) mediate educational outcomes, and to the earlier chapter material on integration differences between immigrant groups.
• SEED: The bedroom television as a material artifact of acculturation — an essay on how the physical layout of immigrant homes encodes competing value systems between first and second generation.