Peer Gender and Mental Health

Demid Getik and Armando Meier ()

Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel

Abstract: Adolescent mental health is key for later well-being. Yet, causal evidence on environmental drivers of adolescent mental health is scant. We study how an important classroom feature---the gender composition in compulsory-school---affects mental health. We use Swedish administrative data (N=576,285) to link variation in gender composition across classrooms within cohorts to mental health. We find that a higher share of female peers in a classroom increases the incidence of mental health diagnoses, particularly among boys. The effect persists into adulthood. Peer composition is thus an important and persistent driver of mental health.

Keywords: school; gender; peer effects; mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I19 I21 I31 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-net and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2020/15

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