Neighborhood Peer Effects in Secondary School Enrollment Decisions
利用墨西哥PROGRESA项目的实验数据，发现邻居中符合项目条件的孩子的入学决策会显著影响不符合条件孩子的入学决策，且这种影响在贫困家庭中更明显，表明鼓励入学的政策可能产生社会乘数效应。
This paper identifies neighborhood peer effects on children's school enrollment decisions using experimental evidence from the Mexican PROGRESA program. We use exogenous variation in the school participation of program-eligible children to identify peer effects on the schooling decisions of ineligible children residing in treatment communities. We find that peers have considerable influence on the enrollment decisions of program-ineligible children, and these effects are concentrated among children from poorer households. These findings imply that policies aimed at encouraging enrollment can produce large social multiplier effects. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.