The Trouble with Boys: Social Influences and the Gender Gap in Disruptive Behavior

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bertrand, Marianne; Pan, Jessica
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.5.1.32
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 32-64
• 关键词: sex-differences; girls; school; skills; performance; childhood; attention; education; coercive; parents

摘要

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.