IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/cepdps/dp0311.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do peer Groups Matter? Peer Groups versus Schooling Effects on Academic Attainment

Author

Listed:
  • Donald Robertson
  • James Symons

Abstract

In this paper we estimate an educational production function. Educational attainment is a function of three types of inputs: peer group, parental and schooling. We find that conventional measures of school quality are not good predictors for academic attainment, once we control for peer group effects. Parental qualities also have strong effects on academic atainment. This academic attainment is then a key determinant of subsequent labour market success, as measured by earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Donald Robertson & James Symons, 1996. "Do peer Groups Matter? Peer Groups versus Schooling Effects on Academic Attainment," CEP Discussion Papers dp0311, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/DP0311.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph G. Altonji & Thomas A. Dunn, 1995. "The Effects of School and Family Characteristics on the Return to Education," NBER Working Papers 5072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Henderson, Vernon & Mieszkowski, Peter & Sauvageau, Yvon, 1978. "Peer group effects and educational production functions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 97-106, August.
    3. Robertson, Donald & Symons, James, 1990. "The Occupational Choice of British Children," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(402), pages 828-841, September.
    4. Donald Robertson & James Symons, 2003. "Self-selection in the state school system," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 259-272.
    5. Betts, Julian R, 1995. "Does School Quality Matter? Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(2), pages 231-250, May.
    6. Summers, Anita A & Wolfe, Barbara L, 1977. "Do Schools Make a Difference?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 639-652, September.
    7. Hanushek, Eric A, 1986. "The Economics of Schooling: Production and Efficiency in Public Schools," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 1141-1177, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fertig, Michael, 2003. "Educational Production, Endogenous Peer Group Formation and Class Composition - Evidence From the PISA 2000 Study," RWI Discussion Papers 2, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.
    2. Maria Iacovou, 2002. "Class Size in the Early Years: Is Smaller Really Better?," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 261-290.
    3. repec:zbw:rwidps:0002 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Steve Bradley & Rob Crouchley, 2020. "The effects of test scores and truancy on youth unemployment and inactivity: a simultaneous equations approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1799-1831, October.
    5. Christian Dustmann & Najma Rajah & Arthur van Soest, 2003. "Class Size, Education, and Wages," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 99-120, February.
    6. Michael Fertig, 2002. "Educational Production, Endogenous Peer Group Formation and Class Composition – Evidence From the PISA 2000 Study," RWI Discussion Papers 0002, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.
    7. Entorf, Horst & Lauk, Martina, 2006. "Peer effects, social multipliers and migration at school: An international comparison," HWWI Research Papers 3-3, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    8. John Sawkins, 2002. "Examination performance in Scottish secondary schools: an ordered logit approach," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(16), pages 2031-2041.
    9. Lanzi, Diego, 2007. "Capabilities, human capital and education," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 424-435, June.
    10. Bradley, Steve & Johnes, Geraint & Millington, Jim, 2001. "The effect of competition on the efficiency of secondary schools in England," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(3), pages 545-568, December.
    11. V. Vandenberghe, 2002. "Evaluating the magnitude and the stakes of peer effects analysing science and math achievement across OECD," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(10), pages 1283-1290.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Fraja, Gianni & Landeras, Pedro, 2006. "Could do better: The effectiveness of incentives and competition in schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 189-213, January.
    2. David Brasington & Don Haurin, 2005. "Capitalization of Parent, School, and Peer Group Components of School Quality into House Price," Departmental Working Papers 2005-04, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    3. L Feinstein & James Symons, 1997. "Attainment in Secondary School," CEP Discussion Papers dp0341, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Dennis N. Epple & Richard Romano, 2003. "Neighborhood Schools, Choice, and the Distribution of Educational Benefits," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of School Choice, pages 227-286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Marlow, Michael L., 1999. "Spending, school structure, and public education quality. Evidence from California," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 89-106, February.
    6. Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2007. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 91-136.
    7. Selod, Harris & Zenou, Yves, 2003. "Private versus public schools in post-Apartheid South African cities: theory and policy implications," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 351-394, August.
    8. Selod, Harris & Zenou, Yves, 2001. "Location and Education in South African Cities under and after Apartheid," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 168-198, January.
    9. Fernández, Raquel, 2001. "Sorting, Education and Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 3020, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Edward P. Lazear, 2001. "Educational Production," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(3), pages 777-803.
    11. Eide, Eric R. & Ronan, Nick, 2001. "Is participation in high school athletics an investment or a consumption good?: Evidence from high school and beyond," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 431-442, October.
    12. J. R. Betts, "undated". "The impact of school resources on women's earnings and educational attainment: Findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1108-96, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    13. Jorge Calero & Josep-Oriol Escardíbul, 2007. "Evaluación de servicios educativos: el rendimiento en los centros públicos y privados medido en PISA-2003," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 183(4), pages 33-66, december.
    14. Raquel Fernandez, 2001. "Sorting, Education and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 8101, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Vandenberghe, Vincent, 1999. "Cost Efficiency and Feasibility of Education Policy in the Presence of Local Social Externalities," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 1999021, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    16. Theodore M. Crone, 1998. "House prices and the quality of public schools: what are we buying?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Sep, pages 3-14.
    17. O'Shaughnessy, Terry, 2007. "Parental choice and school quality when peer and scale effects matter," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 501-515, August.
    18. Rosalind Levacic & Stephen Machin & David Reynolds & Anna Vignoles & James Walker, 2000. "The Relationship between Resource Allocation and Pupil Attainment: A Review," CEE Discussion Papers 0002, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
    19. Gianni De Fraja & Tania Oliveira & Luisa Zanchi, 2010. "Must Try Harder: Evaluating the Role of Effort in Educational Attainment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(3), pages 577-597, August.
    20. Vandenberghe V & Robin S, 2003. "Does (Private) Education Matter? Recent evidence from international OECD data," Public Economics 0301002, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion-papers/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion-papers/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.