Gender Specific Peer Groups and Choice at 16

Don Webber

No 403, Working Papers from Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol

Abstract: The UK government’s aim of achieving a 50% staying on rate in higher education at the age of 16 might not be achievable because it is demandconstrained: not all students want to stay on in education at 16. Peer groups are known to be stronger for boys than for girls and often influence choice at 16. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of gender-specific peer groups on students’ intentions and realisations to stay-on into post-compulsory education at the age of 16. The results suggest that boys’ intentions and realisations are influenced by their male peers. However, girls’ intentions are influenced by their whole peer group while their realisations are influenced by their female peer group. Policy targeted to increase participation rates should recognise these gender differences.

Keywords: Education economics; School choice. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2004-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://carecon.org.uk/DPs/0403.pdf First version, 2004 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:uwe:wpaper:0403

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jo Michell ().