Why do boys and girls make different educational choices? The influence of expected earnings and test scores

Benoît Rapoport () and Claire Thibout ()
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Benoît Rapoport: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Claire Thibout: INED - Institut national d'études démographiques

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: Girls frequently choose educational pathways that lead to lower-paid jobs and less prestigious careers, despite performing as well as boys at school. Using a cohort of French pupils, we estimate a model of educational choices in which the anticipated cost of choosing a pathway depends on the skills in each subject and is allowed to differ between boys and girls. We show that choices in high school and in higher education are partly driven by expected earnings for boys but less for girls. Boys choose more often courses with a component in Sciences and competitive pathways. In high school, gender differences are higher for pupils at the same level in Mathematics and Humanities and are largely due to differences in marginal impact of test scores, which are lower for girls. In higher education, while partly driven by test scores, choices seem to largely depend on other gender differences (tastes, norms).

Keywords: Gender stereotypes; Test scores; Salary wage differentials; Study choices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in Economics of Education Review, 2018, 62, pp.205-229. ⟨10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.09.006⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01781858

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.09.006

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