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Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults have four-year degrees. But rates are higher for adults born in the U.S. to immigrant parents.

(Wikimedia Commons)

U.S.-born adults are substantially more likely to have completed college if one or both of their parents were immigrants than if both their parents were born in the United States.

The Census Bureau released new data Tuesday showing levels of educational attainment in 2014, as measured by the American Community survey.

The U.S. has 210 million adults aged 25 or older, 83 percent of whom were born in this country, the bureau reported.

Among those with two U.S.-born parents, 32 percent had earned a bachelor's degree or higher, figures show.

But for those with at least one foreign-born parent, the college completion rate was 37 percent.

Completing a four-year degree was nearly as common among adults who immigrated to the U.S. as those born to U.S.-born parents. Thirty-one percent of U.S. adults born in other countries hold four-year degrees or higher, the bureau reported. People who came to the U.S. during the 1980s are less likely than those who immigrated before or after that to have earned a college degree.

-- Betsy Hammond

betsyhammond@oregonian.com

503-294-7623; @chalkup