IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/34383.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Education and Selection into Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Roma People in Romania

Author

Listed:
  • Andreea Mitrut
  • Gabriel Kreindler
  • Margareta Matache
  • Andrei Munteanu
  • Cristian Pop-Eleches

Abstract

How does ethnic identification vary with education among disadvantaged minorities? We study this question for Roma people, Europe's largest ethnic minority, using linked Romanian census data and birth records. We measure how individuals change reported ethnicity over time, or “pass.” Roma identification strongly declines with education, from 80% for those with no education to 40% for postsecondary graduates. We estimate a model with persistent individual heterogeneity and find 3-6 times more Roma postsecondary graduates than in official data. Survey data we collect shows that most Romanians are unaware of these patterns. Such selective passing may reinforce stereotypes about marginalized groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreea Mitrut & Gabriel Kreindler & Margareta Matache & Andrei Munteanu & Cristian Pop-Eleches, 2025. "Education and Selection into Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Roma People in Romania," NBER Working Papers 34383, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34383
    Note: DEV ED LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w34383.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:nbr:nberwo:34383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.