More than just friends? Diversity in schools and interracial relationships
Luca Paolo Merlino  1@  , Liam Wren Lewis  2@  , Max Steinhardt  3@  
1 : Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne  (CES)  -  Website
Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS : UMR8174
Maison des Sciences Économiques - 106-112 Boulevard de l'Hôpital - 75647 Paris Cedex 13 -  France
2 : INRA & PSE
Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)
3 : Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg  -  Website
Postfach 700822 22008 Hamburg -  Germany

This paper investigates the impact of school peers on an individual's adult romantic relationships. In particular, we consider the effect of quasi-random variation in the share of black students within an individual's cohort on the percentage of adult relationships that are with blacks. We find that the share of blacks in a given cohort has a positive impact on the share of relationships with blacks later in life. The results remain when we consider cohabiting couples, and also when we focus on a subsample of relationships that were formed in a different state from that where an individual attended school. This suggests that the racial mix of schools has an important impact on racial attitudes. 


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