Knowing me, knowing you: Socio-economic status and (segregation in) peer and parental networks in primary school

Abstract

Students of different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds are sorted into different schools. While integrating schools seems an easy solution to enhance inter-group interaction, this is yet an empirical question as we know little about how networks structure along SES lines in school. We examine the tendency for friendship and parental networks in primary school to structure by SES. We furthermore explore the role of the local school context. To do so, we collected multiplex classroom network data among Dutch students in 68 classrooms (55 schools) in their final year of primary school (grade 6; age 11–12). We link these sociometric data to register data, and test our hypotheses using cross-sectional exponential random graph models and meta-analysis techniques. Findings show that the networks of primary school students and their parents display a tendency for same-SES over cross-SES ties, net of opportunity structures. We do not find evidence for SES differences in the strength of SES homophily. Descriptive analyses show SES disparities in the extent to which parents have ties with the parents of their children’s friends (i.e., intergenerational closure), but these disparities disappear when controlling for other tie-generating mechanisms using ERGMs.