From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries

We use data on children at age 8, 12 and 15 from Young Lives, a cohort study of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, to document the presence of a gender gap across a wide variety of indicators, including nutrition, education, aspirations, subjective well-being...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Dercon, Stefan
Language:	English
Published:	Washington, DC: World Bank 2012
Subjects:	World Development Report 2012
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9110

id	okr-10986-9110
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-91102021-04-23T14:02:44Z From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries Dercon, Stefan World Development Report 2012 We use data on children at age 8, 12 and 15 from Young Lives, a cohort study of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, to document the presence of a gender gap across a wide variety of indicators, including nutrition, education, aspirations, subjective well-being and psychosocial competencies. First, we find that there is considerable heterogeneity across countries, ages and indicators in whether there is any gender bias and whether it is in favour of boys or girls. Second, we find strong evidence of an 'institutionalized' gender bias against girls in education in India and to an extent, Ethiopia; the bias appears to emerge in educational aspirations of parents for their children at age 8, is transmitted to the aspirations of children at 12 and is transformed into gender gaps in test scores related to cognitive achievement at age 15, despite relatively high enrolments. This bias is stronger in rural than in urban India; in rural Peru there is some evidence a pro-male bias in education at age 12 and 15. We also observe lower self-efficacy (as measured by agency) for girls in Ethiopia and India at age 15. Similar patterns exist in Vietnam but in the opposite direction - in favour of girls rather than boys. Evidence in other studies suggests that lower human capital and non-cognitive skills both lead to poorer performance in the labour market, leading to predictions of continuing bias in outcomes for these groups. 2012-06-26T15:38:28Z 2012-06-26T15:38:28Z 2012 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9110 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/ World Bank Washington, DC: World Bank Africa Latin America & Caribbean South Asia
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	World Development Report 2012
spellingShingle	World Development Report 2012 Dercon, Stefan From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
geographic_facet	Africa Latin America & Caribbean South Asia
description	We use data on children at age 8, 12 and 15 from Young Lives, a cohort study of 12,000 children across Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, to document the presence of a gender gap across a wide variety of indicators, including nutrition, education, aspirations, subjective well-being and psychosocial competencies. First, we find that there is considerable heterogeneity across countries, ages and indicators in whether there is any gender bias and whether it is in favour of boys or girls. Second, we find strong evidence of an 'institutionalized' gender bias against girls in education in India and to an extent, Ethiopia; the bias appears to emerge in educational aspirations of parents for their children at age 8, is transmitted to the aspirations of children at 12 and is transformed into gender gaps in test scores related to cognitive achievement at age 15, despite relatively high enrolments. This bias is stronger in rural than in urban India; in rural Peru there is some evidence a pro-male bias in education at age 12 and 15. We also observe lower self-efficacy (as measured by agency) for girls in Ethiopia and India at age 15. Similar patterns exist in Vietnam but in the opposite direction - in favour of girls rather than boys. Evidence in other studies suggests that lower human capital and non-cognitive skills both lead to poorer performance in the labour market, leading to predictions of continuing bias in outcomes for these groups.
author	Dercon, Stefan
author_facet	Dercon, Stefan
author_sort	Dercon, Stefan
title	From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
title_short	From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
title_full	From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
title_fullStr	From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
title_full_unstemmed	From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries
title_sort	from nutrition to aspirations and self-efficacy : gender bias over time among children in four countries
publisher	Washington, DC: World Bank
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9110
_version_	1764408503782342656

From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy : Gender Bias Over Time Among Children in Four Countries

Similar Items