Abstract
SummaryThis paper provides empirical evidence on sibling spillover effects in school achievement using administrative data on 230,000 siblings in England. We extend previous strategies to identify peer effects by exploiting the variation in school test scores across subjects observed at ages 11 and 16 as well as variation in peer quality between siblings. We find a statistically significant positive spillover effect from the older to the younger sibling. Sibling spillovers account for a non‐negligible proportion of the attainment gap between low‐ and higher income pupils in England.
Highlights
In this paper we study the extent to which school achievements of an older sibling directly improve the school outcomes of their younger sibling
We extend the recent work on education production models and school peer effects by Nicoletti and Rabe (2012) and Lavy et al (2012), who both use school register data for England as in our application, and we provide detail on how to identify the causal sibling spillover effect in school test scores at age 16, i.e. the effect of sibling interactions on child development during adolescence
We find that siblings attending the same school have larger spillover effects which could suggest that part of the spillover effect is caused by information transmission, which is likely to be more effective for children going to the same school whatever the older sibling’s school achievements are
Summary
In this paper we study the extent to which school achievements of an older sibling directly improve the school outcomes of their younger sibling. Oettinger (2000), Qureshi (2015a), Adermon (2013) and Joensen and Nielsen (2015) provide evidence on the causal sibling spillover effect on years of schooling, high school graduation, and subject choices. We add to this literature by providing empirical evidence on the extent to which cognitive ability of a child is transmitted to his/her younger sibling. By focusing on spillover effects in compulsory study subjects (English, Science and Maths), we are able to capture sibling influence on skills, effort and motivation rather than on subject choice
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