EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Do Friendship Networks Improve Female Education?

Youjin Hahn, Asad Islam, Eleonora Patacchini and Yves Zenou

No 10674, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We randomly assign more than 6,000 students from 150 primary schools in Bangladesh to work on math assignments in one of three settings: individually, in groups with random schoolmates, or in groups with friends. The groups consist of four people and are balanced by average cognitive ability and ability distribution. While the achievement of male students is not affected by the group assignment, low-ability females assigned to groups outperform low-ability females working individually. The treatment is particularly effective when low-ability females study with friends. To rule out sorting effects, we show that random groups with identical compositions to those of friendship groups do not produce similar effects. Our study thus documents that placing students into study groups with their friends may improve learning, especially for low-ability females.

Keywords: social interactions; education; gender; learning; friendship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-net, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2020, 130, 740-764.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10674.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10674

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).

 
Page updated 2025-01-03
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10674