Peer Influence in the Micro-Foundations of Educational Inequality: The Case of Educational Expectation Formation

• In Event: 287 - Section on Sociology of Education Paper Session. School, Peer, and Neighborhood Effects

Abstract

Educational expectations, or plans for future education, are an important link between a youth’s socioeconomic background and subsequent educational attainments. Yet, the exact factors driving students’ educational expectation formation remain obscure some 40 years after their importance vis-à-vis completed education was first demonstrated. This is an important omission in the literature given a recent wave of individual-level decision-making models that aim to explain persistent educational inequalities through individual or micro-level social psychological processes and emphasizing educational expectations and social influence. Using difference-in-difference models and organizationally induced changes in adolescent students’ peer environments at the transition from middle school to high school, we evaluate the effects of changes in peer influence on changes in adolescent students’ educational expectations. Overall, our preliminary findings demonstrate that moderate changes in peer contexts and influence result in significant changes in students’ college attendance expectations. Moderate proportions of middle school peers in a new high school may lead to new friends who positively influence students’ college attendance expectations or help create a normative school environment reinforcing and encouraging college attendance expectations while protecting adolescents from the deleterious effects of transitioning from middle school to high school. These patterns of peer effects are particularly pronounced for female students and low socioeconomic status (SES) students. Though our findings are based on organizationally induced changes in students’ peer contexts, they are important for popular school choice and other education policies that similarly shuffle students’ peer environments through school change.

Authors

• Megan Andrew, University of Notre Dame

• Jennifer Flashman, University of Notre Dame