Examining Neighborhood Effects on Junior High School Students and Their Mothers:

How Neighborhoods Influence Their Attitudes toward Education and High School Choices

Abstract

    Although previous studies have identified causal relationships between residing in disadvantaged neighborhoods during adolescence and lower university enrollment rates in Japan, the underlying mechanisms remain insufficiently explored. In this paper, I examine how junior high school students and their mothers living in disadvantaged neighborhoods perceive the economic returns of enrolling in high school and university and the extent of their aspirations to attend university. In addition, I investigate whether their attitudes toward education are influenced by compositional or contextual effects of neighborhood disadvantage and whether they affect the academic ranking of children's high school choices. The results indicate that while junior high school students and their mothers living in disadvantaged neighborhoods do not underestimate the economic benefits of attending university compared to those living in other neighborhoods, they place a relatively higher value on the economic benefits of finding employment after high school graduation and have lower aspirations to attend university. This study observed a clear neighborhood effect on high school choice, with contextual effects manifesting only in mothers' aspirations for their children's university enrollment.