Peer income exposure across the income distribution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Spiegel, Michelle; Clark, Leah; Domina, Thurston; Penner, Emily K.; Hanselman, Paul; Yoo, Paul Y.; Penner, Andrew
• 署名单位: Stanford University; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of California System; University of California Irvine; University of California System; University of California Irvine
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-13737
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2410349122
• 发表日期: 2024-02-18
• 关键词: top incomes; INEQUALITY; schools; segregation; TRENDS

摘要

Children from families across the income distribution attend public schools, making schools and classrooms potential sites for interaction between more- and less- affluent children. However, limited information exists regarding the extent of economic integration in these contexts. We merge educational administrative data from Oregon with measures of family income derived from IRS records to document student exposure to economically diverse school and classroom peers. Our findings indicate that affluent children in public schools are relatively isolated from their less affluent peers, while low- and middle- income students experience relatively even peer income distributions. Students from families in the top percentile of the income distribution attend schools where 20 percent of their peers, on average, come from the top five income percentiles. A large majority of the differences in peer exposure that we observe arise from the sorting of students across schools; sorting across classrooms within schools plays a substantially smaller role.