Neighbourhood Effects on Migrant Youth's Educational Commitments: An Enquiry into Personality Differences

Jaap Nieuwenhuis, Pieter Hooimeijer (), Maarten van Ham and Wim Meeus ()
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Pieter Hooimeijer: Utrecht University
Wim Meeus: Utrecht University

No 7510, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In the neighbourhood effects literature, the socialisation mechanism is usually investigated by looking at the association between neighbourhood characteristics and educational attainment. The step in between, that adolescents actually internalise educational norms held by residents, is often assumed. We attempt to fill this gap by looking at how educational commitments are influenced by neighbourhood characteristics. We investigate this process for migrant youth, a group that lags behind in educational attainment compared to native youth, and might therefore be particularly vulnerable to neighbourhood effects. To test our hypothesis we used longitudinal panel data with five waves (N=4179), combined with fixed-effects models which control for a large portion of potential selection bias. These models have an advantage over naïve OLS models in that they predict the effect of change in neighbourhood characteristics on change in educational commitment, and therefore offer a more dynamic approach to modelling neighbourhood effects. Our results show that living in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of immigrants increases the educational commitments of migrant youth compared to living in neighbourhoods with lower proportions. Besides, we find that adolescents with a resilient personality experience less influence of the neighbourhood context on educational commitments than do adolescents with other personalities.

Keywords: personality; adolescents; educational commitment; neighbourhood effects; migrant youth; fixed effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Urban Studies , 2017, 54 (10), 2285-2304

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