Working Paper: NBER ID: w20909
Authors: Victor Lavy; Edith Sand
Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the effect of primary school teachers’ gender biases on boys’ and girls’ academic achievements during middle and high school and on the choice of advanced level courses in math and sciences during high school. For identification, we rely on the random assignments of teachers and students to classes in primary schools. Our results suggest that teachers’ biases favoring boys have an asymmetric effect by gender— positive effect on boys’ achievements and negative effect on girls’. Such gender biases also impact students’ enrollment in advanced level math courses in high school—boys positively and girls negatively. These results suggest that teachers’ biased behavior at early stage of schooling have long run implications for occupational choices and earnings at adulthood, because enrollment in advanced courses in math and science in high school is a prerequisite for post-secondary schooling in engineering, computer science and so on. This impact is heterogeneous, being larger for children from families where the father is more educated than the mother and larger on girls from low socioeconomic background.
Keywords: gender bias; academic achievement; education; teachers; human capital
JEL Codes: J16; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Teachers' overassessment of boys in specific subjects (I24) | Boys' achievements in national tests during middle school and high school (I24) |
| Teachers' overassessment of boys in specific subjects (I24) | Girls' achievements in national tests during middle school and high school (I24) |
| Teachers' biases influence students' choices regarding enrollment in advanced math and science courses in high school (I24) | Boys' enrollment in advanced math and science courses (I24) |
| Teachers' biases influence students' choices regarding enrollment in advanced math and science courses in high school (I24) | Girls' enrollment in advanced math and science courses (I24) |
| Teachers' biases in one subject (A14) | Student performance in other subjects (Y80) |
| Teachers' biases (J71) | Impact on students' academic trajectories and future career opportunities (I24) |
| Teachers' biases (J71) | Heterogeneous impact on students from families with higher paternal education levels (I24) |
| Teachers' biases (J71) | Heterogeneous impact on girls from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (I24) |