American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
The Trouble with Boys: Social Influences and the Gender Gap in Disruptive Behavior
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 5,
no. 1, January 2013
(pp. 32–64)
Abstract
This paper explores the importance of the home and school environments in explaining the gender gap in disruptive behavior. We document large differences in the gender gap across key features of the home environment -- boys do especially poorly in broken families. In contrast, we find little impact of the early school environment on noncognitive gaps. Differences in endowments explain a small part of boys' noncognitive deficit in single-mother families. More importantly, noncognitive returns to parental inputs differ markedly by gender. Broken families are associated with worse parental inputs, and boys' noncognitive development, unlike that of girls', appears extremely responsive to such inputs. (JEL I21, J12, J13, J16, Z13)Citation
Bertrand, Marianne, and Jessica Pan. 2013. "The Trouble with Boys: Social Influences and the Gender Gap in Disruptive Behavior." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5 (1): 32–64. DOI: 10.1257/app.5.1.32Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I21 Analysis of Education
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification
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