The Gender Gap in Mathematics Achievement: Evidence from Italian Data

25 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2016 Last revised: 31 Aug 2024

See all articles by Maria L. Di Tommaso

Maria L. Di Tommaso

Department of Economics "Cognetti de Martiis"

Silvia Mendolia

University of Aberdeen

Dalit Contini

University of Turin

Abstract

Gender differences in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines are widespread in most OECD countries and mathematics is the only subject where typically girls tend to underperform with respect to boys. This paper describes the gender gap in math test scores in Italy, which is one of the countries displaying the largest differential between boys and girls according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we use data from an Italian national level learning assessment, involving children in selected grades from second to tenth. We first analyse the magnitude of the gender gap using OLS regression and school fixed-effect models for each grade separately.Our results show that girls systematically underperform boys, even after controlling for an array of individual and family background characteristics, and that the average gap increases with children's age. We then study the gender gap throughout the test scores distribution, using quantile regression and metric-free methods, and find that the differential is small at the lowest percentiles of the grade distribution, but large among top performing children. Finally, we estimate dynamic models relating math performance at two consecutive assessments. Lacking longitudinal data, we use a pseudo panel technique and find that girls' average test scores are consistently lower than those of boys at all school years, even conditional on previous scores.

Keywords: pseudo panel estimation, cross-sectional data, inequalities, school achievement, education, math gender gap, quantile regression

JEL Classification: J16, I24, C31

Suggested Citation

Di Tommaso, Maria L. and Mendolia, Silvia and Contini, Dalit, The Gender Gap in Mathematics Achievement: Evidence from Italian Data. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10053, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2810464

Maria L. Di Tommaso (Contact Author)

Department of Economics "Cognetti de Martiis" ( email )

Via Po 53
10124 Torino
Italy

Silvia Mendolia

University of Aberdeen ( email )

Dunbar Street
Aberdeen, Scotland AB24 3QY
United Kingdom
0044 1224 272182 (Phone)

Dalit Contini

University of Turin ( email )

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
138
Abstract Views
1,086
Rank
429,178
PlumX Metrics