Community influence as an explanatory factor why Roma children get little schooling

Oded Stark and Ruxanda Berlinschi

No 140, University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics from University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics

Abstract: Parents who experience poverty and who want to provide their children with an escape route can be expected to encourage and support their progeny's education. The evidence that Roma parents behave differently is unsettling. In this paper we test empirically an explanation for that behavior. The explanation is based on a theory (Stark et al. 2018) that can be 'borrowed' to rationalize the enforcement of norms of little formal education in underprivileged communities. An analysis of survey data collected in Roma communities in four Central and Eastern European countries lends support to the explanation. The analysis reveals a strong negative correlation between the influence of the Roma community on an individual member's life and the importance accorded by the individual to formal schooling for children. The correlation is robust to controlling for standard determinants of attitudes towards schooling, such as poverty, unemployment, labor market discrimination, and parents' educational attainment. The analysis suggests that policy interventions aiming to increase the formal education of Roma children need to reckon with the influence of Roma community norms on individual choices.

Keywords: Community influence; Social norms; Social distance; Exposure to relative deprivation; Roma communities; Formal education of children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J70 O12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/229956/1/174437659X.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Community influence as an explanatory factor why Roma children get little schooling (2021)
Working Paper: Community influence as an explanatory factor why Roma children get little schooling (2021)
Working Paper: Community Influence as an Explanatory Factor Why Roma Children Get Little Schooling (2020)
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:zbw:tuewef:140

DOI: 10.15496/publikation-52731

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics from University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().