Peer effects, neighbourhood effects and social housing: impact on students' achievement in England

同伴效应、邻里效应和社会住房：对英格兰学生成绩的影响

• 批准号: ES/J003867/1
• 负责人: Felix Weinhardt
• 金额: $ 20.88万
• 依托单位: London School of Economics and Political Science
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FJ003867%2F1
• 关键词: Peer; effects; neighbourhood; social; housing

My proposal builds upon three distinct projects which I have undertaken during the course of my PhD. These three pieces of research sit at the crossroads between Labour, Urban and Education Economics. Their underlying and unifying theme is the generation and perpetuation of social inequalities and the concept of 'equality of chances', which lies at the heart of our understanding of modern democratic society. As a result, all of my work is directly policy relevant.The first paper looks at the size, significance and heterogeneity of ability peer effects in secondary schools in England. The paper makes an important methodological contribution and shows that it is the exceptionally low- and high-achievers, who account for most or all of the effect of average peer quality on the educational outcomes of other pupils, and this effect varies across genders. This finding adds substantially to the existing literature and suggests that policy should focus attention away from sorting into schools based on average abilities, and towards intra-school mixing of pupils. The paper has now been offered a Revise and Resubmit to the Journal of Labor Economics.My second paper estimates the effect of living in a deprived high density social housing neighbourhood on the educational attainment of teenagers in England. I propose a new estimation strategy exploiting the timing of moving into these neighbourhoods. Using this approach, my preliminary results suggest that there is no evidence of negative effects, which is counter-intuitive and has potentially wide-ranging implications for social housing policy. A previous draft of this paper won the best graduate paper award at the joint 2009 North American Regional Science and Urban Economics Association conference in San Francisco.The third paper investigates the effect of neighbours' characteristics and prior achievements on teenagers' educational and behavioural outcomes. Using an innovative methodology, the project relies on mover-induced variation in neighbourhood quality, whilst controlling for general gentrification trends. Preliminarily results provide little evidence that neighbours' characteristics significantly affect pupil test score progression, and only exert a small effect on pupil behavioural outcomes, such as general attitudes towards schooling, substance use and anti-social behaviour. This would imply focussing policy towards people rather than places. A draft has been accepted to the SOLE conference.Right from the start of the fellowship, I plan to present my work at seminars, discuss my findings with my contacts at the Department for Communities and Local Government, send drafts to researchers working on related topics and submit to major conferences. Consequently, I plan to submit revised versions to further conferences and -using my affiliation- publish my second paper as IZA Discussion Paper in spring 2012.With new insights from my participation in Charles Manski's Cemmap Masterclass on Identification of Social Interactions at IFS/UCL, Professor Machin's expertise and using the feedback from the presentations, I intend to augment my second paper with a structural model. In close coordination with Professor Machin we would then decide if I use this as my "job market paper", or otherwise use my third paper and submit to the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The second year of the fellowship would first evolve around the academic job market. In the final months, I plan to apply for grants to create a nationwide dataset on social housing for future research (data is currently only held locally). I will also disseminate my findings at conferences and outside academia, continuing to fully exploiting CEP media relations and Professor Machin's contacts in order to reach beneficiaries in the public domain, as well.Overall, this would greatly increase the quailty, impact and publication potential of my work and set a solid foundation for my future academic career.

我的建议建立在我在博士学位期间承担的三个不同的项目之上。这三项研究位于劳动经济学、城市经济学和教育经济学之间的十字路口。它们的基本和统一主题是社会不平等的产生和延续以及“机会平等”的概念，这是我们理解现代民主社会的核心。因此，我的所有工作都是直接相关的政策。第一篇论文着眼于在英国中学的能力同伴效应的大小，意义和异质性。该文件作出了重要的方法论贡献，并表明，这是非常低的和高成就的学生，占大多数或所有的平均同龄人的质量对其他学生的教育成果的影响，这种影响因性别而异。这一发现大大增加了现有的文献，并建议政策应集中注意力从分类到学校的基础上平均能力，对校内混合的学生。这篇论文现在已经提供了一个修订和重新提交给劳动经济学杂志。我的第二篇论文估计的影响，生活在一个剥夺高密度的社会住房社区的教育程度的青少年在英格兰。我提出了一个新的估计策略，利用移动到这些街区的时间。使用这种方法，我的初步结果表明，没有证据表明负面影响，这是违反直觉的，并可能对社会住房政策产生广泛的影响。本文的前一稿在2009年于旧金山弗朗西斯科举行的北美区域科学和城市经济学协会联合会议上获得了最佳研究生论文奖。第三篇论文调查了邻居的特征和先前的成就对青少年教育和行为结果的影响。该项目采用创新的方法，依赖于搬家者引起的社区质量变化，同时控制一般的中产阶级化趋势。实验结果几乎没有证据表明邻居的特征会显著影响学生的考试成绩，而对学生的行为结果（如对学校教育的一般态度、物质使用和反社会行为）只产生很小的影响。这将意味着将政策重点放在人而不是地方上。SOLE会议已经接受了一份草案。从奖学金开始，我计划在研讨会上介绍我的工作，与我在社区和地方政府部的联系人讨论我的发现，将草案发送给从事相关主题的研究人员，并提交给主要会议。因此，我计划提交修订版本，以进一步的会议和-使用我的从属关系-发表我的第二篇论文作为IZA讨论文件在2012年春季。从我参加查尔斯·曼斯基的Cemmap大师班在IFS/UCL识别社会互动的新见解，教授梅钦的专业知识和使用的反馈，从演示文稿，我打算增加我的第二篇论文的结构模型。在与梅钦教授的密切合作下，我们将决定是否将这篇论文作为我的“就业市场论文”，或者使用我的第三篇论文并提交给《经济学季刊》。研究金的第二年将首先围绕学术就业市场展开。在最后的几个月里，我计划申请赠款，为未来的研究创建一个全国性的社会住房数据集（数据目前只在当地保存）。我还将在学术会议和学术界之外传播我的研究成果，继续充分利用CEP的媒体关系和Machin教授的联系，以达到公共领域的受益者。总的来说，这将大大提高我的工作质量，影响力和出版潜力，并为我未来的学术生涯奠定坚实的基础。