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.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.