Do School-Level Factors Influence Adolescents’ Partner Choice?

Yang Jiang, University of Michigan

Researchers have found that romantic relationship is desirable for almost all adolescents, but not all of them have dating experience. Prior studies on interracial dating among adolescents usually exclude non-daters from their studies. This paper examines how school-level factors affect adolescents’ dating patterns, while taking non-daters into account. Using the first wave of AddHealth data, I find that school racial composition and school SES do not influence adolescent’s entry into romantic relationships. However, it has strong impact on respondent’s partner choice. Adolescents are more likely to date within their own race and would rather remain single than date interracially, if there are more people of their own race in school.