Study for Nothing? Gender and Access to Higher Education in a Developing Country

We show that the gap in access to higher education between female children at the bottom and at the top of the distribution of household wealth in Peru is greater than among males, and we estimate a structural model of skill formation to assess whether skill development can explain these differences. Our results indicate that boys and girls exhibit similar skill endowments toward the end of their secondary education but experience different returns to skills in terms of access to higher education. Cognitive skills are strong predictors of enrollment for both genders, but noncognitive skills matter only for boys. We also find evidence of gender-specific constraints associated with wealth: while skills explain the majority of the difference in access to higher education between males at the bottom and at the top of the wealth distribution, the female gap in enrollment remains large even after accounting for these factors. Further analysis shows that female children appear to be disproportionately sensitive to the accessibility of higher education. We discuss possible interpretations of this result.