Adèle Lemoine

Paris Dauphine

will give a presentation on

Inherited Gender Norms and the Cognitive Gender Gap: Evidence from SHARE data

Abstract:
Several studies showed that women outperform men in verbal and memory abilities, but this finding is not universal. In particular, this female cognitive advantage decreases when gender roles are more traditional. As literature shows that cognitive functioning improves with human capital investment, gender gaps in education and labour market participation are expected to explain cognitive gender differences. We investigate the contribution of gender norms to the gender cognitive gap using second generation immigrants in the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and measures for gender norms at the parental home-country level in the World Value Survey (WVS) and the European Value Study (EVS). We find that female memory skills decrease relatively to men when both parents are born in a country associated to traditional gender roles. The exploration of underlying mechanisms supports the canal of gender differences in education.