Effects of Childhood Peers on Personality Skills

Peer Effects on Violence: Experimental Evidence from El Salvador

“…A plausible explanation for the differences between my results and those reported in the tracking lit-6 See Sacerdote et al (2011) for a summary of the literature on peer effects on student outcomes in educational settings. Further recent evidence for peer effects on non-cognitive outcomes is provided by Anand and Kahn (2023); Feng et al (2022); Billings and Hoekstra (2019); ; Rao (2019); Gong et al (2019); Fletcher et al (2019);and Fletcher and Ross (2012).…”

“…Evidence has shown that peer groups have powerful and lasting impacts on an individual's economic decisions. Specifically, exposure to different peer groups during childhood or adolescence can influence a person's educational decisions, (risky) behaviors, and socioemotional skills during adolescence (Zárate, 2023;Anand and Kahn, 2023;Feng et al, 2022;Alan et al, 2020;Billings and Hoekstra, 2019;Rao, 2019;Bursztyn and Jensen, 2015) as well as their human capital accumulation (Golsteyn et al, 2021;Carrell et al, 2018), criminal activity (Billings and Hoekstra, 2019;Damm and Dustmann, 2014;Bayer et al, 2009), and labor market outcomes (Carrell et al, 2018) throughout adulthood. In the public policy arena, peer influence is so important that most educational and violence-reduction programs targeting adolescents are implemented in group settings.…”