Gender Performance Gaps: Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Role of Gender Differences in Sleep Cycles

Lester Lusher and Vasil Yasenov (yasenov@stanford.edu)
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Vasil Yasenov: Stanford University

No 10012, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Sleep studies suggest that girls go to sleep earlier, are more active in the morning, and cope with sleep deprivation better than boys. We provide the first causal evidence on how gender differences in sleep cycles can help explain the gender performance gap. We exploit over 240,000 assignment-level grades from a quasi-experiment with a community of middle and high schools where students' schedules alternated between morning and afternoon start times each month. Relative to girls, we find that boys' achievement benefits from a later start time. For classes taught at the beginning of the school day, our estimates explain up to 16% of the gender performance gap.

Keywords: gender difference in sleep cycles; gender performance gap; school start time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I20 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: Economic Inquiry; 2018, 56 (1), 252 - 262

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Related works:
Journal Article: GENDER PERFORMANCE GAPS: QUASI‐EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON THE ROLE OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SLEEP CYCLES (2018)
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