IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp14077.html

Adolescence Development and the Math Gender Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Borra, Cristina

    (University of Seville)

  • Iacovou, Maria

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Sevilla, Almudena

    (London School of Economics)

Abstract

Using different production function models, we study the causal association between adolescence development and the increase in the gap in math performance between boys and girls. We use data from the 1958 British National Child Development Study, a longitudinal survey of all British children born in the first week of March 1958, containing unique information on puberty development and educational outcomes from childhood into adolescence. We first document a widening of about 10 percent of a standard deviation in the gender gap in maths from primary to secondary school in the UK, and show that adolescent development contributes to explain almost two thirds of the widening of the math gender gap during the adolescence years. We also explore the mechanisms behind these effects. Our evidence regarding differences in the impact of puberty development by age, subject and self-perceived math ability suggests that both social conditions and biological factors are behind the estimated relationships between adolescent development and the increase in the gender gap in math in secondary school.

Suggested Citation

  • Borra, Cristina & Iacovou, Maria & Sevilla, Almudena, 2021. "Adolescence Development and the Math Gender Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14077, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp14077.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ana María Iregui-Bohórquez & María Teresa Ramírez-Giraldo & Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & Jorge Leonardo Rodríguez-Arenas, 2025. "De la cobertura al desempeño: Explorando las brechas de género en el sistema educativo colombiano," Borradores de Economia 1301, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Nicoletti, Cheti & Sevilla, Almudena & Tonei, Valentina, 2022. "Gender stereotypes in the family," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118044, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Røed, Marianne & Schøne, Pål & Strøm, Marte, 2025. "How important is girls’ ‘Biological Head Start’ in explaining gender differences in education and the labour market?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14077. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.