Everybody needs good neighbours? Evidence from students' outcomes in England

Arbeitspapier

We estimate the effect of neighbours' characteristics and prior achievements on teenage students' educational and behavioural outcomes using census data on several cohorts of secondary school students in England. Our research design is based on changes in neighbourhood composition caused explicitly by residential migration amongst students in our dataset. The longitudinal nature and detail of the data allows us to control for student unobserved characteristics, neighbourhood fixed effects and time trends, school-by-cohort fixed effects, as well as students' observable attributes and prior attainments. The institutional setting also allows us to distinguish between neighbours who attend the same or different schools, and thus examine interactions between school and neighbourhood peers. Overall, our results provide evidence that peers in the neighbourhood have no effect on test scores, but have a small effect on behavioural outcomes, such as attitudes towards schooling and anti-social behaviour.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 5980

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions ; Education and Research Institutions: General ; State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
• Subject: peer and neighbourhood effects ; cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes ; secondary schools ; Weiterführende Schule ; Nachbarschaftsökonomie ; Soziale Gruppe ; Bildungsverhalten ; Kognition ; Großbritannien

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Gibbons, Steve ; Silva, Olmo ; Weinhardt, Felix
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2011

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/55080
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-201110102473
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET