CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, May 24th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Neighbourhood peer effects in school choice and variations
by socioeconomic background and grade

Quentin Ramon

Assistant Professor
Universidad Mayor (Santiago, Chile) - Center for Economics and Social Policy
Adjunct Researcher
Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES)

This presentation examines the extent to which neighbourhood peers influence school choice, and whether this effect varies according to socioeconomic background and grade.
Using geocoded administrative data from Chile, I build a unique longitudinal dataset linking four applicant cohorts (2020-2023) to their census tract and to their nearest neighbours and grademates who applied to the same grade the year before, which allows me to control for endogeneity issues when measuring peer effects. I estimate logistic regressions to analyse similarity in application as well as similarity in the ranking of these applications.

Results show that low socioeconomic status (SES) students are more likely to conform to their neighbours’ choice, particularly when those neighbours also come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Similarity in school choice is also higher at pre-school levels. Then, using propensity score matching methods, I found that conforming to low-SES neighbours’ school choice is associated with application and enrolment in lower-SES and lower-performing schools. Overall, I argue that geographically embedded social interactions influence the process of school choice and thereby contribute to sustaining school segregation, with potential far-reaching consequences for the reproduction of social inequality.

The results also stress the need for public policies to consider local social interactions to mitigate spatial and social disparities in educational opportunities.

To find out more about Quentin Ramond

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