Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
Cited by 89School Choice and PerformanceEducation, Achievement, and GiftednessIntergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Do the maths: An analysis of the gender gap in mathematics in Africa

Open access
Dickerson, Andy, McIntosh, Steven, Valente, Christine·2015·Economics of Education Review

Abstract

This paper uses microdata for 19 African countries to examine the gender difference in maths test scores amongst primary school children. There is a significant difference in maths test scores in favour of boys, similar to that previously observed in developed countries. This difference cannot be explained by gender differences in school quality, home environment, or within-school gender discrimination in access to schooling inputs. However, the gender gap varies widely with characteristics of the regions in which the pupils live, and these regional characteristics are more predictive of the gender gap than parental education and school characteristics, including teacher gender. At the cross-country level, differences in fertility rates account for nearly half the variation in the gender gap, and this relationship is not due to the correlation between fertility and GDP.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.02.005

Cites

1 of 1 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 31

  1. Alderman, 1996, Decomposing the gender gap in cognitive skills in a poor rural economy, Journal of Human Resources, 31, 229, 10.2307/146049 · DOI
  2. Appleton, 1995, The interaction between poverty and gender in human capital accumulation: The case of the primary leaving exam in the Cote d'Ivoire, Journal of African Economies, 4, 192, 10.1093/oxfordjournals.jae.a036831 · DOI
  3. Aslam, 2008, Gender and household education expenditure in Pakistan, Applied Economics, 40, 2573, 10.1080/00036840600970252 · DOI
  4. Beaman, 2012, Female leadership raises aspirations and educational attainment for girls: A policy experiment in India, Science, 335, 582, 10.1126/science.1212382 · DOI · Paper page
  5. Bedard, 2010, Early gender test score gaps across OECD countries, Economics of Education Review, 29, 348, 10.1016/j.econedurev.2009.10.015 · DOI
  6. Behrman, 1999, Household income and child schooling in Vietnam, World Bank Economic Review, 13, 211, 10.1093/wber/13.2.211 · DOI
  7. Burde, D. and Linden, L.L. (2012). The effect of village-based schools: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial in Afghanistan. NBER Working Paper 18039. · DOI
  8. Chin, 2005, Can redistributing teachers across schools raise educational attainment? Evidence from operation blackboard in India, Journal of Development Economics, 78, 384, 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2004.09.004 · DOI
  9. Colclough, 2000, Gender inequalities in primary schooling: The roles of poverty and adverse cultural practice, International Journal of Educational Development, 20, 5, 10.1016/S0738-0593(99)00046-2 · DOI
  10. Duflo, 2012, Women's empowerment and economic development, Journal of Economic Literature, 50, 1051, 10.1257/jel.50.4.1051 · DOI · Paper page
  11. Ellison, 2010, The gender gap in secondary school mathematics at high achievement levels: Evidence from the American mathematics competitions, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24, 109, 10.1257/jep.24.2.109 · DOI
  12. Fehrler, 2009, The effectiveness of inputs in primary education: Insights from recent student surveys for Sub-Saharan Africa, Journal of Development Studies, 45, 1545, 10.1080/00220380802663625 · DOI
  13. Fryer, R.G. and Levitt, S.D. (2009). An empirical analysis of the gender gap in mathematics, mimeo, July. · DOI
  14. Fryer, 2010, An empirical analysis of the gender gap in mathematics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2, 210
  15. Glewwe, 1996, The relevance of standard estimates of rates of return to schooling for education policy: A critical assessment, Journal of Development Economics, 51, 267, 10.1016/S0304-3878(96)00415-4 · DOI
  16. Glick, 2008, What policies will reduce gender schooling gaps in developing countries: Evidence and interpretation, World Development, 36, 1623, 10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.09.014 · DOI
  17. Glick, 2000, Schooling of girls and boys in a West African country: The effects of parental education, income, and household structure, Economics of Education Review, 19, 63, 10.1016/S0272-7757(99)00029-1 · DOI
  18. Guiso, 2008, Culture, gender and math, Science, 320, 1164, 10.1126/science.1154094 · DOI
  19. Hanushek, 2008, The role of cognitive skills in economic development, Journal of Economic Literature, 46, 607, 10.1257/jel.46.3.607 · DOI
  20. Hedges, 1995, Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals, Science, 269, 41, 10.1126/science.7604277 · DOI · Paper page
  21. Hyde, 2009, Gender, culture and mathematics performance, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 8801, 10.1073/pnas.0901265106 · DOI
  22. Jayachandran, 2009, Life expectancy and human capital investments: Evidence from maternal mortality declines, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, 349, 10.1162/qjec.2009.124.1.349 · DOI
  23. Jolliffe, 1998, Skills, schooling, and household income in Ghana, World Bank Economic Review, 12, 81, 10.1093/wber/12.1.81 · DOI
  24. Kazianga, H., Levy, D., Linden, L.L., And Sloan, M. (2012). The effects of “Girl-Friendly” schools: Evidence from the BRIGHT School Construction Program in Burkina Faso. NBER Working Paper 18115. · DOI
  25. Machin, 2008, Global sex differences in test score variability, Science, 322, 1331, 10.1126/science.1162573 · DOI
  26. Michaelowa, 2001, Primary education quality in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa: Determinants of learning achievement and efficiency considerations, World Development, 29, 1699, 10.1016/S0305-750X(01)00061-4 · DOI
  27. Moll, 1998, Primary schooling, cognitive skills and wages in South Africa, Economica, 65, 263, 10.1111/1468-0335.00127 · DOI
  28. Pope, 2010, Geographic variation in the gender differences in test scores, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24, 95, 10.1257/jep.24.2.95 · DOI
  29. Spelke, 2005, Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science? A critical review, American Psychologist, 60, 950, 10.1037/0003-066X.60.9.950 · DOI
  30. Spencer, 1999, Stereotype threat and women's math performance, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 4, 10.1006/jesp.1998.1373 · DOI · Paper page
  31. Spolaore, 2009, The diffusion of development, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, 469, 10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.469 · DOI

Cited by

See all 89

Metadata

Authors
Dickerson, A., McIntosh, S., & Valente, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Sheffield (GB)
  • University of Bristol (GB)
Corresponding author
Valente, Christine
Venue
Economics of Education Review
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-06
Volume
46
Pages
1-22
ISSN
0272-7757 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2235466654
Cited by
89
References
1
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1
FWCI
31.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Economics of Education Review (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Explore Bristol Research (publishedVersion)
  • White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
  • Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Royal Economic Society
  • University of Oxford
  • Department for International Development
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Education, Achievement, and Giftedness
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
Keywords
gender gap in mathematics, elementary school students, mathematics scores, fertility rate, regional characteristics, parental education, teacher gender, school quality, family environment, Africa

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.