Everybody Needs Good Neighbours? Evidence from Students' Outcomes in England

48 Pages Posted: 25 Sep 2011

See all articles by Stephen Gibbons

Stephen Gibbons

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Geography and Environment

Olmo Silva

London School of Economics (LSE) - Centre for Economic Performance; London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Geography and Environment; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Felix Weinhardt

Humboldt University of Berlin; London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)

Abstract

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.

Keywords: peer and neighbourhood effects, cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, secondary schools

JEL Classification: C21, I20, H75, R23

Suggested Citation

Gibbons, Stephen and Silva, Olmo and Silva, Olmo and Weinhardt, Felix, Everybody Needs Good Neighbours? Evidence from Students' Outcomes in England. IZA Discussion Paper No. 5980, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1933337 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1933337

Stephen Gibbons (Contact Author)

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Geography and Environment ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
[44] (0)20 7955 6245 (Phone)
[44] (0)20 7955 7773 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.lse.ac.uk/people/s.gibbons@lse.ac.uk/

Olmo Silva

London School of Economics (LSE) - Centre for Economic Performance

Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - Department of Geography and Environment ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 7 / 9
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Felix Weinhardt

Humboldt University of Berlin ( email )

Unter den Linden 6
Berlin, AK Berlin 10099
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.fweinhardt.de

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

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