We estimate a sequential model of schooling to assess the major contributing factors to the large gender imbalance in educational attainment within racial groups. First, we find that differences between males and females in measures of early behavior account for the majority of the gender gap for each racial group. Second, we show that black males have the largest response to improvements in family background characteristics, such that equalizing the distribution of family background characteristics for black and white youths reduces the gender gap in college enrollment among black youth by 50%. ? 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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1 June 2019

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Journal of Applied Econometrics 34(4) , pp.502-525, 2019

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DOI: 10.1002/jae.2699

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jae.2699

This Journal article is published under the centre's Education programme.