EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Does single-sex schooling improve students' physical fitness?: Evidence from a natural experiment in South Korea

Youngjoo Jung and Sanghee Mun

Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 250, issue C

Abstract: Leveraging a randomized natural experiment, this study examines the impact of attending single-sex middle schools on students' physical fitness, measured through standardized nationwide physical tests. In South Korea, middle school students are assigned by lottery to either single-sex or coeducational schools within their designated school zones, providing an ideal setting to evaluate the effects of single-sex schooling. Using school-level data covering all middle schools, the study finds that boys attending single-sex schools achieve significantly higher pass rates on standardized physical fitness tests, suggesting improved physical fitness compared to their peers in coeducational schools. However, no similar improvement is observed for girls attending single-sex schools. These findings suggest that single-sex schooling has differential effects by gender, highlighting the need to further research to understand the mechanisms underlying these varied outcomes.

Keywords: Single-sex school; Physical fitness; Athletic performance; BMI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176525001168
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecolet:v:250:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525001168

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112279

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-30
Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:250:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525001168