Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement

Abstract

We would like to acknowledge Lori Timmins for her outstanding research assistance on this project. We would also like to thank Jerome Adda, Joseph Altonji, Marianne Bertrand, Russell Cooper, David Card, Steve Durlauf, Christian Dustmann, Andrea Ichino, Claudia Goldin, Larry Katz, John Kennan, Magne Mogstad, Mario Small, Uta Schonberg, Chris Taber, Thomas Lemieux, Glen Waddell, Ian Walker, Basif Zafar, and seminar participants at Bocconi University, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, European University Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University, Norwegian School of Business and Economics, Paris I, Sciences Po, University College London, University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale University, the CEA 2011, the CIFAR SIIWB Workshop, the NBER Summer Institute 2013, and SOLE 2012 for helpful comments on this and earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank ICPSR and MTF for allowing us to use the data, and the usual disclaimer applies. The authors are grateful for CIFAR's financial support. Fortin also acknowledges funding from SSHRC Grants #410-2011-0567. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.© 2013 by Nicole M. Fortin, Philip Oreopoulos, and Shelley Phipps. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. ABSTRACTUsing three decades of data from the "Monitoring the Future" cross-sectional surveys, this paper shows that, from the 1980s to the 2000s, the mode of girls' high school GPA distribution has shifted from "B" to "A", essentially "leaving boys behind" as the mode of boys' GPA distribution stayed at "B". In a reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, we find that gender differences in post-secondary expectations, controlling for school ability, and as early as 8th grade are the most important factor accounting for this trend. Increases in the growing proportion of girls who aim for a post-graduate degree are sufficient to account for the increase over time in the proportion of girls earning "A's". The larger relative share of boys obtaining "C" and C+" can be accounted for by a higher frequency of school misbehavior and a higher proportion of boys aiming for a two-year college degree. IntroductionWomen now far outnumber men among recent college graduates in most industrialized countries (OECD, 2008). As Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) The first goal of this paper is to document changes in gender disparities in the academic performance of high school students (12 th , 10 th , and 8 th graders) over the last three decades using survey data from the "Monitoring the Future" (MTF) project. 5 ...

Gender gaps in the effects of childhood family environment: Do they persist into adulthood?

“…Finally, there may be cultural factors that lead boys, in particular, to develop negative attitudes to school in low income or single parent families or that inhibit the educational aspirations of boys relative to girls (DiPrete and Buchmann, 2013). Fortin et al (2015) find that much of the gender divergence in high school GPA distributions can be attributed to the increasingly ambitious post-school plans of girls relative to boys. Autor et al (2016) re-examine this "vulnerable boys" hypothesis using data for a large sample of children in Florida that links birth certificates with academic and health records.…”

Leaving Boys Behind

“…This reduces the sample sizes by comparison with Table 2. Complete descriptive statistics for twelfth graders are presented in Table A2 of Fortin, Oreopoulos, and Phipps (2013). Descriptive statistics for eighth graders are available upon request.…”

“…9. Data from the Current Population Survey show that the actual proportion of young women (25-39 years old) employed in clerical work has dropped by 9 percent over the 35-year period while the proportion employed in professional occupations has increased by 9 percent (see Table A1 in Fortin, Oreopoulos, and Phipps 2013). 10.…”

Gender Wage Gap and Its Effect on Test Scores of Immigrant Students

“…One potential explanation for the gender wage gap is that it might reflect differences in cognitive skills. In fact, a gender gap exists in educational achievement, for example as measured by school test scores (e.g., Dee 2007;Goldin et al 2008;Cornwell et al 2013;Stoet and Geary 2013;Fortin et al, 2015). Graduates with higher test scores in mathematics are observed to attain a higher educational level and earn higher income than others (e.g., Altonji 1995; Levine and Zimmerman 1995;Rose and Betts 2004;Joensen and Nielsen 2009).…”