 Elective affinities matter as much as ethnicity in multi-ethnic schoolsChiara Rapallini and Aldo Rustichini Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, vol. 131, issue PA, 243-262 Abstract: We estimate the relative importance of ethnicity and individual characteristics, such as personality and cognitive skills, in determining social connections by using survey data on seven-year-old children from multi-ethnic schools (N=453). We find that friendships are based mainly on common play, and are independent of the need to find help for school activity and homework. Friendship networks among children arise on the basis of their sex, but also according to affinity of personality and cognitive skills, as much as on ethnic background. These findings are worth considering when multiculturalism is chosen as the foundation of the immigration policies. Rather than emphasizing what makes the individuals in an ethnic group different, a farsighted policy could try to point to the elective affinity among individuals. However, since differences in individual characteristics may be systematically associated with ethnic background, this finding may point to a lasting reason for a lack of cohesion in multiethnic societies. Keywords: Cognitive skills; Multi-ethnic schools; Social cohesion; Networks; Personality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:131:y:2016:i:pa:p:243-262 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.09.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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