When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women's College Major Choices
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 15,
no. 3, July 2023
(pp. 1-34)
Abstract
We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by US women's colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environment affects women's human capital investments. Our event-study analyses of newly collected historical data find a 3.0–3.5 percentage point (30–33 percent) decline in the share of women majoring in STEM fields. While coeducation caused a large influx of male peers and a modest increase in male faculty, we find no evidence that it altered the composition of the female student body or other gender-neutral inputs. Extrapolation of our main estimate suggests that coeducational environments explain 36 percent of the current gender gap in STEM majors.Citation
Calkins, Avery, Ariel J. Binder, Dana Shaat, and Brenden Timpe. 2023. "When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women's College Major Choices." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15 (3): 1-34. DOI: 10.1257/app.20210692Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
- I26 Returns to Education
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
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