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Does Being with More Girls in School Improve Students ’ Human Capital Outcomes and Behavior ? Evidence on Effects and Mechanisms

The consequences of gender social and learning interactions in the classroom are of interest to parents, policy makers, and researchers. However, little is known about gender peer effects in schools and their operational channels. In this paper we estimate the effects of classroom gender composition on scholastic achievements of boys and girls in Israeli primary, middle, and high schools and also identify the mechanisms through which these peer-effects are enacted. In particular, we examine whether gender peer effects work through changes in classroom disruptions and violence, in inter-students interactions, in students-teachers relationships, through changes in the enforcement of discipline in school and students’ overall satisfaction with school. In assessing these mechanisms we distinguish between changes due to variation in the classroom gender composition and due to changes in the behavior of students. To control for potentially confounding unobserved characteristics of schools and students that might be correlated with peer gender composition, we rely on idiosyncratic variations in gender composition across adjacent cohorts within the same schools. Using the considerable cohort-to-cohort variation in gender composition within schools, which appears unrelated in any systematic way to student background characteristics, we obtain consistent estimates that suggest that an increase in the proportion of girls leads to significant improvement in cognitive outcomes of students. In high schools, the positive effects are evident for a wide range of outcomes related to the matriculation exams. The estimated effects are of similar magnitude for boys and girls. The effect in primary schools is evident mainly in Math and Science test scores with no effect in Hebrew and English test scores. The positive female peer effect is related to a lower level of classroom disruption and violence, improved inter-students and students-teachers relationships as well as to an increase in overall students' satisfaction with their school. No effect was found on school’s rules and enforcement of discipline. In addition, no effect was found on individual behavior of boys or girls which suggests that the positive peer effects of girls on classroom environment are due mostly to compositional change, namely due to having more girls in the classroom and not due to improved behavior of peers. * We thank the Ministry of Education for assisting with the data and Issi Romem and Rachel Berner for outstanding research assistance. ‡ Hebrew University of Jerusalem, RHUL, CEPR and NBER. † Princeton University.