Social Econ Blog

Tomorrow (Thursday), we will begin discussing how family choices (specifically parent's choices) affect the choices and outcomes of their children.

One of the first (and seemingly trivial choices) parents make -- deciding on your name -- can have lasting effects on child outcomes.

First, David Figlio finds that boys with feminine names are more likely to misbehave in middle school. He uses this seemingly random finding to examine another effect of interest to this course -- the effects of classroom disruptions on student behavior and performance. The paper can be found here. Here is the abstract:

This paper proposes an unusual identification strategy to estimate the effects of disruptive students on peer behavior and academic outcomes. I suggest that boys with names most commonly given to girls may be more prone to misbehavior as they get older. This paper utilizes data on names, classroom assignment, behavior problems and student test scores from a large Florida school district in the school years spanning 1996-97 through 1999-2000 to directly study the relationship between behavior and peer outcomes. I find that boys with female-sounding names tend to misbehave disproportionately upon entry to middle school, as compared to other boys and to their previous (relative) behavior patterns. In addition, I find that behavior problems, instrumented with the distribution of boys' names in the class, are associated with increased peer disciplinary problems and reduced peer test scores, indicating that disruptive behavior of students has negative ramifications for their peers.

Second, Steve Levitt's and Stephen Dubner's book, Freakonomics, discusses some other interesting effects of baby names. Specifically, they discuss the effects of distinctively black names on children. The relevant excerpts can be found here and here. The core paper this chapter is based on(by Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt), is here. Here is the abstract:

In the 1960s Blacks and Whites chose relatively similar first names for their children. Over a short period of time in the early 1970s, that pattern changed dramatically with most Blacks (particularly those living in racially isolated neighborhoods)adopting increasingly distinctive names, but a subset of Blacks actually moving toward more assimilating names. The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a model in which the rise of the Black Power movement influenced how Blacks perceived their identities. Among Blacks born in the last two decades, names provide a strong signal of socioeconomic status, which was not previously the case. We find, however, no negative relationship between having a distinctively Black name and later life outcomes after controlling for a child's circumstances at birth.