Peer Effects in Program Participation

By Gordon B. Dahl, K. V. Løken, Magne Mogstad. Social Science Research Network, 2014

422 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The influence of peers could play an important role in the take up of social programs. However, estimating peer effects has proven challenging given the problems of reflection, correlated unobservables, and endogenous group membership. We overcome these identification issues in the context of paid paternity leave in Norway using a regression discontinuity design. Our approach differs from existing literature which attempts to measure peer effects by exploiting random assignment to peer groups; in contrast, we study peer effects in naturally occurring peer groups, but exploit random variation in the "price" of a social program for a subset of individuals. Fathers of children born after April 1, 1993 in Norway were eligible for one month of governmental paid paternity leave, while fathers of children born before this cutoff were not. There is a sharp increase in fathers taking paternity leave immediately after the reform, with take up rising from 3% to 35%. While this quasi-random variation changed the cost of paternity leave for some fathers and not others, it did not directly affect the cost for the father's coworkers or brothers. Therefore, any effect on the brother or the coworker can be attributed to the influence of the peer father in their network. Our key findings on peer effects are four-fold. First, we find strong evidence for substantial peer effects of program participation in both workplace and family networks. Coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points, respectively, more likely to take paternity leave if their peer father was induced to take up leave by the reform. Second, the most likely mechanism is information transmission about costs and benefits, including increased knowledge of how an employer will react. Third, there is essential heterogeneity in the size of the peer effect depending on the strength of ties between peers, highlighting the importance of duration, intensity, and frequency of social interactions. Fourth, the estimated peer effect gets amplified over time, with each subsequent birth exhibiting a snowball effect as the original peer father's influence cascades through a firm. Our findings demonstrate that peer effects can lead to long-run equilibrium participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected.

Subfields: Accounting, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/364d0bc8b88c8c2fa30506e9f253eb17eecf0356

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Citations in the corpus

Children and the Remaining Gender Gaps in the Labor Market (2020, positive): “For example, Dahl et al. (2014) document considerable peer effects in paternity leave-taking, suggesting that take-up is a function of fathers’ identity and reputational concerns.”
Reserving Time for Daddy: The Consequences of Fathers’ Quotas (2019, positive): “In Norway, the introduction of the quota did not decrease mothers’ potential leave, but since most mothers took the entire amount of family leave prior to the reform (Dahl et al. (2014), pp.”
Gender in the Twenty-First Century (2020, background): “Studies from Sweden, Norway, and Quebec, where such “daddy quotas” have been enacted, show that most fathers tend to take up their quota (never much more than a couple of months) but rarely more than their quota (Dahl, Løken, and Mogstad 2014; Ekberg, Eriksson, and Friebel 2013; Patnaik 2019).”
Barriers to equality: why British fathers do not use parental leave (2018, background): “Furthermore, Dahl, Løken, and Mogstad (2014) find that Norwegian fathers are more likely to use paternity leave when their male co-workers take it.”
Maternity and Family Leave Policy (2017, neutral): “…and fathers’ labor market outcomes, see: Tanaka and Waldfogel (2007); Nepomnyaschy and Waldfogel (2007); Rege and Solli (2013); Huerta et al. (2013); Dahl et al. (2014); Almqvist and Duvander (2014); Cools et al. (2015); Bartel et al. (2015); Bünning (2015); Bunning and Pollmann-Schult (2016).”
Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock Stopping Policies? (2016, background): “Some have argued that gender-neutral policies may benefit women through reducing social stigma against use (Rehel and Baxter, 2015; Lazear and Rosen, 1990; Dahl et al., 2014).”
Causal Effects of Paternity Leave on Children and Parents (2015, neutral): “(2007), Deming (2009), Almond and Currie (2010)).”
Young Adults Living with Their Parents and the Influence of Peers (2018, background): “Moreover, in the presence of peer effects, policies that target a specific group of people may have a snowball effect on other groups (Dahl et al., 2014).”
Does paternity leave reduce fertility? (2019, background): “On the other hand, Dahl et al. (2016) find no fertility effects of two extensions of”
The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery (2011, background): “Sacerdote 2001) and by exploiting the random timing of income tax rebates (Sumit Agarwal, Chunlin Liu, and Nicholas S. Souleles 2007). Social effects of income shocks have recently been studied by Erzo F. P. Luttmer (2005) and Manuela Angelucci and Giacomo De Giorgi (2009), though only the latter pa”
Clicking on heaven's door: the effect of immigrant legalization on crime (2017, methodology): “Following common practice in RD studies (see, for instance, Fredriksson et al., 2013 and Dahl et al., 2014), we pool the observations from all lotteries and include lottery-fixed effects to prevent heterogeneity in the baseline crime rate across lotteries (the intercept of the regression) from…”
The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations (2017, background): “Some innovative policies have been developed recently, including parental leave entitlements that incentivize fathers’ leave taking (Dahl, Løken, and Mogstad 2014; Patnaik 2016), which may reduce the negative effects of extended leaves on women.”