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  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2016
  5. Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood

  • Raj Chetty
  • Nathaniel Hendren
  • Frina Lin
  • Jeremy Majerovitz
  • Benjamin Scuderi
American Economic Review
vol. 106, no. 5, May 2016
(pp. 282–88)
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Abstract

We show that differences in childhood environments shape gender gaps in adulthood by documenting three facts using population tax records for children born in the 1980s. First, gender gaps in employment rates, earnings, and college attendance vary substantially across the parental income distribution. Notably, the traditional gender gap in employment rates is reversed for children growing up in poor families: boys in families in the bottom quintile of the income distribution are less likely to work than girls. Second, these gender gaps vary substantially across counties and commuting zones in which children grow up. The degree of variation in outcomes across places is largest for boys growing up in poor, single-parent families. Third, the spatial variation in gender gaps is highly correlated with proxies for neighborhood disadvantage. Low-income boys who grow up in high-poverty, high-minority areas work significantly less than girls. These areas also have higher rates of crime, suggesting that boys growing up in concentrated poverty substitute from formal employment to crime. Together, these findings demonstrate that gender gaps in adulthood have roots in childhood, perhaps because childhood disadvantage is especially harmful for boys.

Citation

Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, and Benjamin Scuderi. 2016. "Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood." American Economic Review, 106 (5): 282–88. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161073

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
  • J13 Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
  • J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
  • J46 Informal Labor Markets
  • K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law