Raising charitable children: the effects of verbal socialization and role-modeling on children’s giving

This paper uses nationally-representative data from the PSID and CDS to estimate the causal effects of two parent socialization actions—talking to children about giving and role-modeling—on children’s decisions whether or not to give to charity. We develop an identification framework based on the intra-household allocation and cultural transmission literatures that shows how different assumptions about parental response to time-varying unobserved changes in children’s prosocial values can be combined with the child fixed effects estimate and the difference between siblings’ over-time-differences estimate to infer a bound on the causal effect of parental action to socialize their children. Under the identifying assumption we think is most reasonable for socializing the willingness to give to charity, that parents treat the socialization actions of others as cultural substitutes, our estimates imply that talking to children about giving raises the probability of children’s giving by at least .13. We find no evidence that parental role-modeling affects children’s giving, except among non-African-American girls. The identification framework and substantive results have implications for those with a general interest in using data from naturalistic settings to estimate causal effects of parental socialization actions, those interested in the external validity of laboratory findings, and those interested in the socialization of warm glow

When Elementary Students Change Peer Groups: Intragroup Centrality, Intergroup Centrality, and Self-Perceptions of Popularity

The current study follows two cohorts of fourth and fifth graders across 1 school year to better understand why some students change peer groups. The study focuses on popularity and intragroup social status. We examined whether differences between individuals’ and group members’ self-perceptions of popularity were related to changing peer groups. In addition, we investigated whether more peripheral group members were likely to leave their peer group. Results suggest that not only are peripheral group members and group members with dissimilar self-perceptions of popularity more likely to change groups, but they have more similar self-perceptions of popularity in their new groups. By employing a novel method of measuring within-group homophily, the current study expands the sparse literature on why individuals might change group membership

Aggression in Inner-City Early Elementary Classrooms: Individual and Peer-Group Configurations

While recent investigations suggest that subtypes of aggressive youth differentially experience social support for problem behavior, little work has examined if this holds for younger children. This study examined the classroom social structure and social functioning of inner-city African American early elementary school children. Ninety-two (53 boys, 39 girls) 1st graders from two inner-city schools were followed for two years. Configural analysis uncovered considerable heterogeneity in the relationships among overt aggression, popularity, and social network centrality. Two subsets of aggressive students were identified, one marked by high social prominence, the other by low levels of popularity. Peer groups marked by the behavioral similarity of constituent members were identified, and changes in affiliation patterns over time indicated selection criteria