دانلود رایگان مقاله چاپ ارتباط بین انتخاب کالج هم نژادی

Abstract

Recent empirical work has demonstrated the importance both of educational peer effects and of various factors that affect college choices. We connect these literatures by highlighting a previously unstudied determinant of college choice, namely the college choice made by one's older sibling. Data on 1.6 million sibling pairs of SAT-takers reveals that younger and older siblings’ choices are very closely related. One-fifth of younger siblings enroll in the same college as their older siblings. Compared to their high school classmates of similar academic skill and with observably similar families, younger siblings are about 15–20 percentage points more likely to enroll in 4-year colleges or highly competitive colleges if their older siblings do so first. These findings vary little by family characteristics. Younger siblings are more likely to follow the college choices of their older siblings the more they resemble each other in terms of academic skill, age and gender. We discuss channels through which older siblings’ college choices might causally influence their younger siblings, noting that the facts documented here should prompt further research on the sharing of information and shaping of educational preferences within families.

5. Discussion and conclusion

This paper documents a number of previously unknown facts about intra-family patterns in college enrollment. First, many younger siblings apply to and enroll in the same colleges as their older siblings. Second, even controlling for a rich set of covariates, older siblings’ college enrollment decisions are strongly predictive of their younger siblings’ decisions about whether to enroll and which quality of college to enroll in. Third, these strong relationships between siblings’ college choices vary little by income, race or proximity to public 4-year colleges. Fourth, younger siblings are more likely to follow the college choices of their older siblings the more they resemble each other in terms of academic skill, age and gender. These facts, taken as a whole, are consistent with the possibility that the college decisions of older siblings in- fluence the college decisions of younger siblings. There is, however, a potential non-causal explanation for these patterns, namely that the covariates available to us for this analysis are insufficient to control for fundamental differences between families that determine college enrollment choices. These could include differences in educational preferences, information about college or the labor market, or access to credit. It may be that siblings simply have the same preferences for factors such as college quality and distance from home that result from a shared environment. If the available covariates do not completely absorb such inter-family differences, then the strong relationship between siblings’ choices may be partly picking up those unobserved differences. If so, older siblings’ college choices reveal something about a family’s type, in which case it is unsurprising that such choices then predict those of younger siblings.