Siblings and the education gender gap
The gender gap in education disproportionately affects poor children. New research looks at siblings to find out why boys born into poverty are less likely to succeed than girls.
Girls in the United States graduate from high school at higher rates than boys. This gap is much more pronounced among African-American students and students from low-income families than it is for their white and higher-income peers.
In order to find out why the female-male education gap disproportionately affects poor children, researchers from Northwestern, MIT and the University of Florida looked at birth and academic data from more than a million children in Florida, from 200,000 families between 1992 and 2002.
They discovered that compared to girls, boys born into poverty are more likely to skip school than their more affluent peers. They’re also less likely to graduate high school, and are more likely to commit serious crimes as juveniles.
David Figlio is one of the researchers behind the report and he joins Stephen on the podcast this week.