Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education

Brian A. Jacob

No 8964, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Nearly 60 percent of college students today are women. Using longitudinal data on a nationally representative cohort of eighth grade students in 1988, I examine two potential explanations for the differential attendance rates of men and women -- returns to schooling and non-cognitive skills. The attendance gap is roughly five percentage points for all high school graduates. Conditional on attendance, however, there are few differences in type of college, enrollment status or selectivity of institution. The majority of the attendance gap can be explained by differences in the characteristics of men and women, despite some gender differences in the determinants of college attendance. I find that higher non-cognitive skills and college premiums among women account for nearly 90 percent of the gender gap in higher education. Interestingly, non-cognitive factors continue to influence college enrollment after controlling for high school achievement.

JEL-codes: I20 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: CH ED
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (211)

Published as Jacob, Brian. “Where the Boys Aren’t: Non-Cognitive Skills, Returns to School and the Gender Gap in Higher Education.” Economics of Education Review 21 (2002): 589-598.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8964.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8964

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8964

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().