CSH Lecture Series on Network Inequality – with Benjamin Rosche

“Socioeconomic segregation in adolescent friendship networks: A network analysis of social closure in US high schools” Adolescent friendship networks are characterized by low interaction across both socioeconomic and racial lines. Using data from the National Study of Adolescent Health and a new exponential random graph modeling approach, this study examines the degree, pattern, and determinants of socioeconomic segregation and its relationship to racial segregation in friendship networks in high school. The results show that friendship networks are overall less socioeconomically segregated than they are racially segregated. However, the exclusion of low-SES students from high-SES cliques is pronounced and, unlike racial segregation, unilateral rather than mutual: many friendship ties from low-SES students to high-SES peers are unreciprocated. The decomposition of determinants indicates that about half of the socioeconomic segregation in friendship networks can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic composition between schools. The other half is attributable to students’ friendship choices within schools and driven by stratified courses (about 13 percent) as well as racial and socioeconomic preferences (about 37 percent). In contrast, relational mechanisms like triadic closure – long assumed to amplify network segregation – have only minor effects on socioeconomic segregation. These results highlight that SES-integrated friendship networks in educational settings are difficult to achieve without also addressing racial segregation. Implications for policymakers and educators are discussed. About Benjamin Rosche Benjamin Rosche is a computational social scientist focused on social networks, inequality, and family demography. He will soon receive his Ph.D. at Cornell University and then join Princeton University as a postdoc in the Office of Population Research. Ben's research leverages and develops statistical methods to explore social phenomena through conceptually precise and methodologically rigorous empirical research. The paper he will present is part of an NSF-funded project on cross-SES friendship and socioeconomic attainment in the US. As part of this project, Ben has co-authored a literature review on causal social network analysis, published in the Annual Review of Sociology. Next to the project on cross-SES friendship, Ben has developed an explanatory variance decomposition approach to study treatment effects on within- and between-group inequality and a multilevel approach to study micro-macro processes. Website: www.benrosche.com Social media:   / ben_rosche   Learn more about the Complexity Science Hub: https://csh.ac.at/   / complexity-science-hub     / cshvienna     / cshvienna     / cshvienna