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The Effects of Racial and Extracurricular Friendship Diversity on Achievement

Author

Listed:
  • Anil Nathan

    (Department of Economics, College of the Holy Cross)

Abstract

This paper finds the effect of having friends of a similar race and who are involved in similar activities. It explores data which allows a peer group to be defined openly through self nominations. Using a strategy that corrects for the endogeneity of peer effects by instrumenting using variables at the "grade within school" level, it is shown that friendship diversity can help whites increase achievement. Although not much significance was found with other races, most of the strategies pushed towards the direction of racial diversity aiding achievement. Regarding extracurricular activities, it is found that there is a benefit in having friends in common individual academic activities, conditional on the respondent only belonging to academic or scholastic clubs. There are insignificant effects in having friends in common sports, conditional on the respondent only participating in sports.

Suggested Citation

  • Anil Nathan, 2008. "The Effects of Racial and Extracurricular Friendship Diversity on Achievement," Working Papers 0816, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hcx:wpaper:0816
    as

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    File URL: https://hcapps.holycross.edu/hcs/RePEc/hcx/HC0816-Nathan_DiversityAchievement.pdf
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Fabio Landini & Natalia Montinari & Paolo Pin & Marco Piovesan, 2014. "Friendship Network in the Classroom: Parents Bias and Peer Effects," Discussion Papers 14-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    2. Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Social Interactions within Cities: Neighborhood Environments and Peer Relationships," Working papers 2009-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Jason M. Fletcher & Stephen L. Ross & Yuxiu Zhang, 2013. "The Determinants and Consequences of Friendship Composition," Working papers 2013-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    4. Landini, Fabio & Montinari, Natalia & Pin, Paolo & Piovesan, Marco, 2016. "Friendship network in the classroom: Parents bias on peer effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 56-73.
    5. Jason M. Fletcher & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "Estimating the effects of friends on health behaviors of adolescents," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(10), pages 1450-1483, October.
    6. Hsieh, Chih-Sheng & Lin, Xu, 2017. "Gender and racial peer effects with endogenous network formation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 135-147.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health; Add Health; friendship formation; returns to diversity; scholastic achievement; school redistribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

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