Neighbourhood turnover and teenage attainment

Stephen Gibbons, Olmo Silva and Felix Weinhardt ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Theories about neighbours’ influence on children’s education that are based on social capital, cohesion and disorganisation stress the importance of neighbourhood stability. This is because stability is regarded as necessary for building strong ties and friendships, which in turn affect educational outcomes. However, amongst the vast number of studies on the effect of neighbours on a child’s education, none has tested whether neighbourhood stability matters. We fill this gap by estimating the causal effect of residential turnover on student test score gains. Estimation is based on administrative data on four cohorts of secondary school students in England, allowing us to control for pupil-level, neighbourhood-level and school-by-cohort level unobservables and for changes in neighbourhood composition driven by students’ residential mobility. We show that a high turnover of same-school-grade students reduces value-added for teenagers who stay in their neighbourhood, although turnover of other age groups does not matter. These results coupled with auxiliary findings based on survey data suggest that neighbours’ turnover damages education through the disruption of local ties and friendships, highlighting a so-far undiscovered spillover of mobility.

Keywords: education; neighbourhood; turnover; social capital; friendship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I20 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2017-02-14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published in Journal of the European Economic Association, 14, February, 2017, 15(4), pp. 746 - 783. ISSN: 1542-4766

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66364/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment (2017)
Journal Article: Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment (2017)
Working Paper: Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment (2014)
Working Paper: Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:66364

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