The Economics of Gender and Educational Achievement: Stylized Facts and Causal Evidence

There are two well-established gender gaps in education. First, females tend to have higher educational attainment and achievement than males, and this is particularly the case for children from less advantaged backgrounds. Second, there are large differences in the fields of specialization chosen by males and females in college and even prior to college, and females disproportionately enter less highly paid fields. Gender differences in noncognitive traits, behavior, and interests have been shown to relate to differences in educational outcomes; however, this evidence cannot generally be given a causal interpretation. In contrast, the literature has been creative in estimating causal impacts of a wide range of factors using experimental and quasiexperimental variation. While the approaches are compelling, the findings vary widely across studies and are often contradictory. This may partly reflect methodological differences across studies, but it also may result from substantial true heterogeneity across educational systems and time periods. Lower educational achievement of males has been linked to gender differences in attitudes, behaviors, and educational aspirations as well as the tendency of males to mature at older ages. Differential field choices by gender are related to differences in comparative advantage by gender and gender differences in preferences for types of study and work and for nonpecuniary aspects of jobs, such as their flexibility and gender mix. There are reasons to believe that policy should address the two gender gaps, and many possible policy approaches exist. However, their effectiveness is unclear, and there is scope for further work to determine which policies are likely to be effective and in which circumstances.

Nativist Intuitions

Having shown that innate knowledge is a viable scientific hypothesis with considerable evidence in its support, the next three chapters examine laypeople’s intuitions about innate knowledge. We describe a series of experiments that contrasts people’s intuitions about the origins of cognitive traits (those that capture knowledge) and noncognitive traits (either sensory, motor, or emotive capacities). Results show that people believe that cognitive traits are not innate. People maintain these convictions even when they are provided with detailed descriptions of experiments from infant research (those reviewed in previous chapters), complete with an explanation of the rationale and method; while science clearly suggests these principles are present in newborns, people insist that they aren’t. Other results demonstrate that our antinativist intuitions are a bias, as people maintain these intuitions despite explicit evidence to the contrary, and even when they are presented with innate knowledge of nonhuman species. These results show that people are systematically and selectively biased against innate ideas.

A Need for Cognition Scale for Children and Adolescents

Need for Cognition (NFC) signifies “the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking” ( Cacioppo & Petty, 1982, p. 116 ). Up to now, no scale of sufficient psychometric quality existed to assess NFC in children. Using data from three independent, diverse cross-sectional samples from Germany, Luxembourg, and Finland, we examined the psychometric properties of a new NFC scale intended to fill in this gap. In all samples, across grade levels ranging from 1 to 9, confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized nested factor structure based on Mussel’s (2013) Intellect model, with one general factor Think influencing all items and two specific factors Seek and Conquer each influencing a subset of items. At least partial scalar measurement invariance with regard to grade level and sex could be demonstrated. The scale exhibited good psychometric properties and showed convergent and discriminant validity with an established NFC scale and other noncognitive traits such as academic self-concept and interests. It incrementally predicted mostly statistically significant but relatively small portions of academic achievement variance over and above academic self-concept and interest. Implications for research on the development of NFC and its role as an investment trait in intellectual development are discussed.

Conscientiousness Is the Most Powerful Noncognitive Predictor of School Achievement in Adolescents

Much research has demonstrated that intelligence and conscientiousness have a high impact on individual school achievement. To figure out if other noncognitive traits have incremental validity over intelligence and conscientiousness, we conducted a study on 498 eighth-grade students from general secondary schools in Austria. Hierarchical regressions for three criteria (GPA, science, and languages) were performed, including intelligence, the Big Five, self-discipline, grit, self-efficacy, intrinsic-extrinsic motivation, and test anxiety. Intelligence and conscientiousness alone accounted for approximately 40% in the variance of school achievement. For languages and GPA, no other personality and motivational predictors could explain additional variance; in science subjects, only self-discipline added incremental variance. We conclude that – in addition to intelligence as powerful cognitive predictor – conscientiousness is the crucial noncognitive predictor for school achievement and should be focused on when supporting students in improving their performance.