Ethnic diversity and educational success: Evidence from France

This paper explores the relationship between ethnic diversity and adolescent educational outcomes at a very fine level. The French Labor Force Survey is used to obtain information on neighborhood composition and we use repetition of the school year at age 15 to 16 as an indicator of school underperformance. We use the method of Bayer, Ross, and Topa (2008) to take account of endogeneity. Although high ethnic diversity of the residential area and educational success seem to be negatively related at first sight, we show that the causal relationship between the two disappears when all confounding factors are properly controlled for. This result is robust for alternative definitions of origin.