The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers

Scott Carrell, Mark Hoekstra and Elira Kuka

American Economic Review, 2018, vol. 108, issue 11, 3377-3415

Abstract: A large and growing literature has documented the importance of peer effects in education. However, there is relatively little evidence on the long-run educational and labor market consequences of childhood peers. We examine this question by linking administrative data on elementary school students to subsequent test scores, college attendance and completion, and earnings. To distinguish the effect of peers from confounding factors, we exploit the population variation in the proportion of children from families linked to domestic violence, who have been shown to disrupt contemporaneous behavior and learning. Results show that exposure to a disruptive peer in classes of 25 during elementary school reduces earnings at age 24 to 28 by 3 percent. We estimate that differential exposure to children linked to domestic violence explains 5 percent of the rich-poor earnings gap in our data, and that each year of exposure to a disruptive peer reduces the present discounted value of classmates' future earnings by $80,000.

JEL-codes: I21 I26 J13 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20160763
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (148)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20160763 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... BekYreYMQ0e70TR_dVoT (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... 9rXePx8MsKCuYQQ9GSb6 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers (2018)
Working Paper: The Long-Run Effects of Disruptive Peers (2016)
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:aea:aecrev:v:108:y:2018:i:11:p:3377-3415

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().