Gender, Income, and Numeracy Test Scores

Molly Paterson (), Jaai Parasnis and Michelle Rendall
Additional contact information
Molly Paterson: Monash University

No 2022-02, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The performance of students in numeracy tests reveals gaps based on students’ gender and household income. In this paper, using longitudinal data on Australian children, we show the interrelationship between (i) socioeconomic gaps based on early-life household income, and (ii) the gender gap in numeracy. We find that between Grades 3 to 9, boys have a distinct advantage in numeracy scores over girls, which widens over time. We also find that, by Grade 9, poorer female students are doubly disadvantaged. This disadvantage does not arise because of differences in socioeconomic status between boys and girls but because the effect of a lower socioeconomic background on test scores is significant only for girls. We find that mother’s education and labor force status play an important role in the emergence of gender gaps, at both ends (top and bottom) of the income distribution. We confirm that early life circumstances continue to impact student’s achievement well into adolescence and these exacerbate gender gaps, thus demonstrating the importance of targeted early interventions to address gaps in key skills acquisition for the modern economy.

Keywords: Australia; parental education; household income; numeracy; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-gen, nep-his, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://monash-econ-wps.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws ... s/moswps/2022-02.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender, Income, and Numeracy Test Scores (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mos:moswps:2022-02

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://www.monash.e ... esearch/publications

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Simon Angus ().