HIGH SCHOOL CHOICES AND THE GENDER GAP IN STEM

Women are less likely than men to graduate with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM). We use detailed administrative data for a recent cohort of Ontario high school students, combined with data from the province's university admission system, to analyze the sources of this gap. We show that entry to STEM programs is mediated through an index of STEM readiness that depends on end‐of‐high school courses in math and science. Most of the gender gap in STEM entry can be traced to differences in the share of college entrants who are STEM‐ready; only a small share is attributable to differences in the choice of major conditional on readiness. We then use high school course data to decompose the gender gap in STEM readiness into two channels: one reflecting the gap in the fraction of high school students with the necessary prerequisites to enter STEM, the other arising from differences in the overall fractions of females and males who enter university. The gender gap in the fraction of males and females with STEM prerequisites is small. The primary driver of the gap in STEM readiness is the low rate of university entry by nonscience‐oriented males. (JEL I21, 28, I20)     

NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT AND THE GENDER GAP IN ADOLESCENT VIOLENT CRIME

Although researchers consistently demonstrate that females engage in less criminal behavior than males across the life course, research on the variability of the gender gap across contexts is sparse. To address this issue, we examine the gender gap in self-reported violent crime among adolescents across neighborhoods. Multilevel models using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) indicate that the gender gap in violent crime decreases as levels of neighborhood disadvantage increase. Further, the narrowing of the gender gap is explained by gender differences in peer influence on violent offending. Neighborhood disadvantage increases exposure to peer violence for both sexes, but peer violence has a stronger impact on violent offending for females than for males, producing the reduction in the gender gap at higher levels of disadvantage. We also find that the gender difference in the relationship between peer violence and offending is explained, in part, by (1) the tendency for females to have more intimate friendships than males, and (2) the moderating effect of peer intimacy on the relationship between peer violence and self-reported violent behavior.     

ACCOUNTING FOR THE GENDER GAP IN COLLEGE ATTAINMENT

One striking phenomenon in the U.S. labor market is the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. Females have outnumbered males in college attainment since 1987. We develop a discrete choice model of college entry decisions to study the driving forces of changes in college attainment by gender. We find that the increase in relative earnings between college‐educated and high‐school‐educated individuals and the increasing parental education have important effects on the increase in college attainment for both genders, but cannot explain the reversal of the gender gap. Rising divorce probabilities increase returns to college for females and decrease those for males, and thus are crucial in explaining the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. (JEL J24, J16, I20)     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OF MARRIED MEN AND WOMEN: An Asian Case

Using a wide variety of measures of psychological well-being obtained from a representative sample of married men and women in Bangkok, Thailand, we examine gender differences in psychological well-being. We find that, in Bangkok, as in the United States, married men generally enjoy a higher level of psychological well-being than do married women. We find no support for role strain theory, but we do find support for role enhancement theory. We find that social support has little effect on psychological well-being, but that social strain not only has a significant effect on well-being but also largely accounts for gender differences in well-being. The mixed findings suggest the importance of testing theories in different societal contexts, for they may or may not be easily portable from one culture to another.     

RACE AND TRUST IN GOVERNMENT: TESTING THE POLITICAL REALITY MODEL

Ever since the Institute for Social Research began measuringpolitical trust more than twenty years ago, racial differenceshave been noted. Since 1968 blacks have been notably less trustingthan whites. The explanation most commonly offered is the politicalreality model. This note directly tests the political realitymodel by comparing the relationship of race to trust in twosettings. One is the nation in 1984 and the second is a citywhere a black mayor and black administration had been in officefor eight years. If the political reality model is correct,the relationship of being black to trust should be positivein the local setting, precisely the opposite of the negativedirection in national samples. The political reality model performedwell under this direct comparison. As others have found, theCPS trust questions measure in large part one's evaluation ofincumbents. These incumbent evaluations are part of the politicalreality that blacks respond to in answering the trust questions.     

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND STRIKES: PROBLEMS IN TESTING THE HAAS AND STACK MODEL

Haas and Stack (1983) make a bold attempt to establish an empirical relationship between strike volume (working-days lost due to industrial disputes) and economic development using parametric statistical techniques in the from of ordinary least squares regression. They conclude that "the effect of economic development on strikes follows a parabolic curve"(p. 56). While the authors express the customary caution about the reliability of their data, they ignore various problems with their data, i.e., method and technique which may invalidate the conclusions of the study. These problems are dealt with in this article.     

GENDER IDEOLOGY AND STATUS ATTAINMENT OF CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN WOMEN IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Theoretically derived measures and hypotheses concerning the connection between family ideology, gender ideals, and status attainment levels of conservative Christian women are examined in the twenty-first century. Conservative Christian women have a more intensive view of mothering, a stronger prolife stance, a younger age of childbearing, a higher number of children and a lower education level. These trends tend to intensify for women who convert to conservative churches after the age of 16 and reduce for women who engage in wage-work. A belief in Biblical inerrancy directly reduces educational attainment as does a higher intensity of mothering, a younger age of childbearing, and higher number of children. While there is no discernible direct effect of religiosity on income level, there is an indirect effect that is important to note.     

WORKER ATTITUDES AND THE COST OF PRODUCTION: HYPOTHESIS TESTS IN AN EQUILIBRIUM MODEL

This paper extends the application of neoclassical production theory to include the effects of worker attitudes on productivity and cost of production, using data for the U.S. automobile industry. Behavioral indicators of worker attitudes are imbedded in a standard four-input translog cost function. The coefficients of the imbedded function are determined in estimation of the cost function simultaneously with its share equations. Hypotheses concerning the effects of worker attitudes on the cost function are tested, and the properties of the index of worker attitude that emerge from the estimation are examined.     

GENDER ROLE ATTITUDES AND MARRIAGE AMONG YOUNG WOMEN

Although sociological research on family change has emphasized the importance of gender role attitudes for decades, relatively few empirical studies have demonstrated behavioral consequences of these attitudes. We formulate hypotheses predicting both an impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage behavior and a reciprocal impact of early marriage behavior on changes in gender role attitudes. We also investigate the role of cohabitation in these relationships. While previous research has found that women who believe that wives should be homemakers enter marriage more quickly, we find that under some conditions these attitudes delay marriage. We use multiwave panel data to show that the behavioral impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage depends on plans for attending school. Among young women who expect to complete a four-year college degree or more, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to lower rates of marriage; however, among young women with low educational expectations, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to higher rates of marriage. In addition, we show that experiencing a marriage in early adulthood leads to more agreement that wives should be homemakers.     

TESTING A LIFE-CYCLE HYPOTHESIS OF THE BALANCE-OF-PAYMENTS EFFECTS OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

This paper proposes one possible determinant of the diversity of experience and behavior of multinational corporations and examines it empirically. The determinant is the "age" of foreign operations or "maturity" of foreign experience. We find empirical support for the proposition that the balance-of-payments flows between U.S. manufacturing parents and their foreign affiliates follow a predictable life cycle or sequence. We also find that the lags between "youth" and "full maturity" are perhaps much longer than the existing literature has suggested.     

SEX-DIFFERENCES IN WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT: A TEST OF THE SPECIFIC CAPITAL HYPOTHESIS

This paper investigates the effect of sex-differences in turnover on the wages and employment of women relative to men. Using data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity, it is estimated that at least two-thirds of the relative wage differential between men and women within occupations is accounted for by sex-differences in turnover and training. In addition, the relative number of women employed in an occupation varies inversely with the amount of on-the-job training, as measured by the rate of wage growth experienced by white males in the occupation. No attempt is made to compute possible biases arising from the interaction between market discrimination and sex-differences in labor force behavior.     

UNDERPRICING IN PUBLIC LOTTERIES: A CRITIQUE OF USER-PAY AND ALL-PAY TARIFFS

A body of literature spanning from medical ethics to public economics has amassed regarding the rationing of underpriced public resources. This study investigates the effects of price on entry, individual and aggregate expected consumer surplus, and tax revenues in user-pay and all-pay (AP) lotteries. Comparative statics indicate that expected surplus may increase (decrease) as price increases (decreases) if entry is sufficiently responsive though entry in AP lotteries is inelastic at all prices. Further, the lotteries are shown to be outcome equivalent under revenue equivalency. Selected results are evaluated numerically with simulations performed across a broad class of distributions describing individual private values. ( JEL D45, D61, H42)     

THE JOURNEY TO WORK AND GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS:

It has been well documented that women tend to work closer to home than men. One interpretation of this finding has been that women face more spatially constrained labor markets than men, and these constraints are thought to be a factor in the gender gap in earnings. A recent study of Tel Aviv, Israel, by Moshe Semyonov and Noah Lewin-Epstein (1991) also found that working women clearly tend to hold employment more in the vicinity of their homes than do men. The observed deficits in earnings by employed women were thought to be exchanged for compliance with traditional gender-role expectations. Our study cross-validates key portions of the Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein study for the United States by examining the location of labor markets and their relationship to gender inequality in earnings in the 1988 wave of the NLSY panel database. Using annual earnings as the dependent variable and other similarly defined variables, we parallel their multiple regression analysis. The time-to-work reports of NLSY panel members are used to assess their commuting behavior and the results of this analysis are compared across four types of residential locations: rural, small urban, suburban, and large central city. We modestly confirm the gender inequalities in earnings produced by differential commuting behaviors for men and women but cannot fully generalize them to a broad set of residentially defined labor markets. For instance, women in suburban settings do have a higher return in earnings from time spent commuting but this effect is not significantly higher than the same returns for suburban men. A somewhat surprising negative effect of commuting time on the earnings of suburban women and men was also observed. We suggest further research on this problem involving the "perceived constraint' hypothesis to explain the commuting gap between men and women.     

WOMEN CANDIDATES IN THE NEWS: AN EXAMINATION OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN U.S. SENATE CAMPAIGN COVERAGE

By covering male and female candidates differently, the newsmedia may influence the success of female candidates for publicoffice. A content analysis was conducted to assess potentiallyimportant differences in the newspaper coverage of a sampleof male and female U.S. Senate candidates in the elections of1982–86. The results of the study show that female candidates for the U.S. Senate are treated differently by the press.Female candidates receive less news coverage and the coveragethey do receive concentrates more on their viability and lesson their issue positions. Furthermore, female candidates' viabilitycoverage is more negative than that of their male counterparts.Given these gender differences in press treatment, we wouldexpect voters' recognition of male candidates to exceed thatof female candidates and we would also expect evaluations offemale candidates to be tied more closely to their perceivedviabil ity. Because female candidates are often considered noncompetitiveby the press, this attention to the horserace may lead votersto develop more negative evaluations of female candidates. Theseresults suggest that current patterns of press coverage mayserve as a critical obstacle for women running for the U.S.Senate.     

THE STATE STREET MILE: AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN COMPETITION AVERSION IN THE FIELD

Gender differences in “competitiveness,” previously documented in laboratory experiments, are hypothesized to play a role in a wide array of economic outcomes. This paper provides evidence of competition aversion in a natural setting somewhere between the simplicity of a laboratory experiment and the full complexity and ambiguity of a labor market. The “State Street Mile” race offers both male and female participants a choice between two different levels of competition. Large, systematic age and gender differences are observed in the relationship between true ability and the decision to enter the more competitive race. Overall, qualified women and older runners are far less likely than qualified young men to enter a competitive race with prizes. However, the fastest young women unanimously enter the competitive race. Therefore, while we confirm age and gender differences in competitiveness in our field setting, the economic consequences to capable young women are rather small. (JEL J1, J7, M5)