
Why have women outpaced men? There’s little cognitive difference between the sexes, and males do better on standardized tests.
But Murphy, Becker, and Hubbard argue that women tend to have better “non-cognitive skills” than men do. Those personal skills and character traits such as persistence, self-control, and conscientiousness may help women excel academically and stay in school until they graduate.
The academic achievement gap actually starts before college: 25 percent more females than males took high-school advanced-placement tests in 2010, the Cleveland Fed economists find.
“There is a substantial gap between the measured high school performance of males and females,” Topel and Murphy write in a 2014 study, noting that female graduating high school seniors have, as a group, higher grade point averages than their male counterparts. “This high school gender gap in academic performance persists in the population that continues on to college.”
via Women are winning the human capital race | The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
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