The gender gap in mathematics achievements: evidence from Italian data

This paper describes the Italian gender gap in math utilizing the National Test “Invalsi” for the year 2013, in which all Italian children in school year 2, 5, 6, 8 and 10 are tested. The magnitude of the gender gap is measured using OLS and a school fixed effect model. We find that the female dummy is negative for all years, even after controlling for a socio-economic indicator, parental education, maternal professional status, geographical areas, number of siblings, kindergarten attendance, math self-beliefs (only year 5 and 6), belief about the importance of math and the type of high school (only year 10). In order to check if the gap is increasing with the age of the child, lacking longitudinal data, we use a pseudo panel technique and find that the gap is increasing from age 7 to age 15 with a slight decrease at age 11. Finally, we study the distribution of the gap across test scores, using quantile regressions, and find that the gap is higher for top performing children. This result is confirmed using a metric-free technique.