Peer Gender and Mental Health

Demid Getik () and Armando Meier ()
Additional contact information
Demid Getik: Department of Economics, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 7082, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Armando Meier: University of Lausanne

No 2020:13, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

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: 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)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2020-07-17, Revised 2021-09-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-hea and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2020_013

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