Rank, Sex, Drugs, and Crime

Benjamin Elsner and Ingo Isphording

No 9478, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper we show that a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort is an important determinant of engaging in risky behaviors. Using longitudinal data from representative US high schools, and exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the cohort composition within a school, we find a strong negative effect of a student's rank on the likelihood of smoking, drinking, having unprotected sex, and engaging in physical fights. We further provide suggestive evidence that these results are driven by status concerns and differences in career expectations.

Keywords: beliefs; peer effects; ability rank; risky behavior; expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 I21 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2015-11
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: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Journal of Human Resources, 2018, 53(2), 356-381

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9478.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Rank, Sex, Drugs, and Crime (2018)
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:iza:izadps:dp9478

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().