Reference Height and Social Activities Participation: Evidence From Add Health

Abstract

Extracurricular activities are an integrated part of many students’ secondary school experience and benefit their accumulation of human capital, especially non-cognitive skills. Peer characteristics likely influence a student’s decision to participate in extracurricular activities, yet such empirical evidence is limited. This paper studies how a high school student’s participation in non-academic and non-athletic activities affects her peer height. To answer this question, I use a student in-home survey and parent study from wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD HEALTH) and use a cross-cohort, within-school research design to explore the plausibly exogenous variation in peer height to identify its effect on participation in the school newspaper or student council. Fixed effects estimates show that having taller peers is associated with a lower probability of participating in social activities. This effect vanishes after controlling for the socioeconomic status of peers’ parents, suggesting that it could be mainly attributed to skill variations among students’ families. Heterogeneous analysis reveals that male students are only influenced by the height of their male peers, negatively affecting their participation in social activities. Conversely, female students are unaffected by the height of their female peers but are more likely to participate in social activities if they have taller male peers.

Bowen Tan

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Bowen Tan is a job market candidate in empirical health economics on the 2023 - 2024 job market.