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Girls Dominate, Boys Left Behind: Decomposing the Gender Gap in Education Outcomes in Jamaica

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  • Nicholas A. Wright

    (Department of Economics, Florida International University)

Abstract

This paper utilizes administrative data to investigate the gender gap in high school performance on various high-stakes exams and the gender disparity in academic outcomes at the leading university in the Caribbean. The results show that female students outperformed their male peers, being 8.5 and 6.6 percentage points more likely to pass a generic subject in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) exams, respectively. These results are robust across subject type, school ownership, school rank, and subject difficulty. Additionally, more females are admitted to each degree program annually, and they continue to outperform males regardless of age, enrollment status, or admission scores. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicate that school attributes, subject-cohort composition, and subject choice explain up to 78% of the gender gap in CSEC and CAPE pass rates, while college readiness, college-level decisions, and field of study fully explain the gap in college GPA.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas A. Wright, 2024. "Girls Dominate, Boys Left Behind: Decomposing the Gender Gap in Education Outcomes in Jamaica," Working Papers 2410, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:fiu:wpaper:2410
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    File URL: https://economics.fiu.edu/research/working-papers/2024/2410.pdf
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender Achievement Gap; Academic Performance; High-Stakes Exam; STEM;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • N36 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Latin America; Caribbean

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