Is it the family or the neighborhood? Evidence from sibling and neighbor correlations in youth education and health

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. AbstractIn this paper we present sibling and neighbor correlations in school grades and cognitive skills as well as indicators of physical and mental health for a sample of German adolescents. In a first step, we estimate sibling correlations and find substantial influence of shared family and community background on all outcomes. To further disentangle the influence of family background and neighborhood, we estimate neighbor correlations. Our results show that for all outcomes, estimated neighbor correlations are clearly lower than estimated sibling correlations. However, especially for cognitive skills and mental health, neighbor correlations are still substantial in relation to sibling correlations. Thus, compared to existing results from other countries, the influence of the neighborhood is not negligible in Germany for these outcomes. JEL codes: J62

Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills, and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

“…4 This includes family background and community factors. Among others,Solon et al (2000),Page and Solon (2003),Leckie et al (2010),Nicoletti and Rabe (2013) andLindahl (2011) show that an individual's family is a more influential factor than his or her neighborhood Bügelmayer and Schnitzlein (2014). present results on German adolescents suggesting that although the influence of the neighborhood is not negligible in Germany, family background is the predominant factor.…”

Intergenerational health mobility: Evidence from Danish registers

“…For Sweden, Björklund and Jäntti (2012) find a brother correlation of adult height of 0.53 which is virtually identical to what Mazumder (2008) reports for the United States. For body mass index and weight, Mazumder (2008) estimates sibling correlations around 0.27–0.33, not too different from 0.35 for body mass index found for German adolescents (Bügelmayer & Schnitzlein, 2018). Also, when gauging mobility in body mass index by parent–child associations, Dolton and Xiao (2017) find a striking resemblance across six very different countries, 3 all of them displaying intergenerational elasticities of around 0.20.…”

“…Bügelmayer and Schnitzlein (2018) find sibling correlations in physical health of 0.23 using the German SOEP and Roos et al. (2014) report comparable magnitudes of 0.26–0.32 when proxying health by hospital and physician costs in a Canadian context.…”

Inequalities in Educational Outcomes: How Important Is the Family?

“…However, studies that compare the sibling correlation in education with the respective correlation among neighbouring children suggest that neighbourhood characteristics are of minor relevance in explaining the sibling resemblance in educational outcomes (e.g. Solon et al ., ; Raaum et al ., ; Lindahl, ; Nicoletti and Rabe, ; Bügelmayer and Schnitzlein, ). Hence, there must be something within the family that accounts for the relatively high sibling correlation in educational achievement.…”