Zhengwei Yan;Bing Li;

• 1:School of Economics
• 2: Central University of Finance and Economics
• 3:Lingnan College
• 4: Sun Yat-sen University

Abstract：

This paper uses data from the random classroom assignment sample of the China Education Panel Survey to examine the spillover effects of classmates' siblings' gender composition on students' outcomes. We find that a higher proportion of female siblings among classmates is associated with significant improvements in students' academic performance, cognitive skills, and non-cognitive skills. These results remain robust after accounting for potential reflection problems and omitted variable concerns. We further explore the underlying mechanisms and show that students' effort and learning attitudes serve as key mechanisms through which the gender composition of classmates' siblings generates spillover effects, with student diligence playing a particularly central role. In addition, explanatory power analyses indicate that students' effort and learning attitudes account for a substantial share of the observed effects. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of gender composition on human capital accumulation.

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Foundation: 国家社会科学基金重大招标项目“城乡融合与新发展格局战略联动的内在机理与实现路径研究”（项目编号：21&ZD085）;; 中央财经大学科教融合研究生学术新星孵化计划“方言与城市间贸易：基于文化和制度双重视角的解释”（项目编号：2024110）;; 国家自然科学基金面上项目“竞争性市场环境与中国国际贸易比较优势”（项目编号：72473161）的资助

Authors: Zhengwei Yan;Bing Li;

References：

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• (1)此处兄弟姐妹也包括了学生自己。 (2)在稳健性部分,为了考察非随机分班带来的潜在影响,参考Gong et al.(2021)和Golsteyn et al.(2021)的做法,本文还进行了一个安慰剂检验,即随机去掉部分学校样本之后,检验回归结果是否还成立。具体来说,为了保持足够多的样本,本文参考Gong et al.(2021)的做法,随机剔除两个学校,并对学习成绩、认知能力和非认知能力三个变量进行2211次回归(C■次)。结果表明,每个分布都以各自的基准结果为中心,这说明我们的基准结果不太可能因为包括非随机分班样本而产生估计偏差。 (3)在这里,为了更好地进行估计,本文没有控制六年级语数外平均吃力程度。 (4)我们排除了过往文献经常探讨的社交网络机制(Huang and Zhu,2020)。我们发现,班级同学兄弟姐妹的性别构成中女性比例越高,并没有发现学生的社交网络质量得到了显著变化,例如并没有更多学习成绩优秀、学习努力刻苦的好朋友,同时也没有逃学、旷课、打架的好朋友。 (5)这一结果仅为相关性探讨,目的是提供更多的证据。但在固定班级固定效应、学生层面和家庭层面控制变量的基础上,仍具有一定的因果效应。 (6)我们在这里也去掉了学生自己,使用真实的兄弟姐妹性别构成进行回归,发现结果仍然成立。