The Gender Gap in Math: Its Possible Origins in Neighborhood Effects

Gender differences in most cognitive skills are fading, but a gender gap remains in secondary school that favors males in higher level math skills. This gap is not evident in elementary school where test scores for the two sexes are equivalent. However, the daily experiences of young boys and girls differ in ways that could affect their math skills in early adolescence. In a large random sample of youngsters in Baltimore, over their first two years of school, boys' gains in math reasoning achievement were more sensitive to resources outside the home than were girls'. In line with the greater responsiveness of boys' math skills to these neighborhood resources, the boys' math reasoning scores became significantly more variable over time than did the girls'. When differentiated course programs became available in middle school, this greater variability of the boys' math scores led the high-scoring boys in the "academic" program to outscore the girls in that program, even though in the total sample the means for boys and girls were about the same. In short, by the end of middle school a "gender gap" emerged in math among high-scoring youngsters. These trends in variability and the greater sensitivity of males to neighborhood resources combined with school tracking offer a new and more sociological perspective on the emergence of the gender gap in math in early adolescence.