Beyond the Average: Peer Heterogeneity and Intergenerational Transmission of Education
45 Pages Posted: 30 Dec 2014 Last revised: 16 Apr 2023
Abstract
Estimating the effect of 'ethnic capital' on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of location choice of immigrants and the reflection problem. We exploit a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany to identify the causal impact of parental peer-heterogeneity on the educational outcomes of their children. To identify the direction of peer effect we restrict to no-child-adult-peers who completed their education much before the children in our sample of interest.We find that children of low-educated parents benefit significantly from the presence of high-educated neighbors, with more pronounced effects in more polarized neighborhoods and significant gender heterogeneity. In contrast, we do not find any negative influence coming from the low-educated neighbors. Our estimates are robust to a range of flexible peer definitions. Overall, the findings suggest an increase in parental aspirations as the possible mechanism rather than a direct child-to-child peer effect.
Keywords: policy experiment, peer effects, immigrant, Germany, ethnic capital, education
JEL Classification: R23, J15, I21
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation