Gender Differences in Educational Attainment: Evidence on the Role of Tracking from a Finnish Quasi‐experiment
研究了芬兰1970年代综合学校改革将分轨年龄从10-11岁推迟到15-16岁后，女孩更倾向选择学术轨道，并缩小了成年收入性别差距4个百分点。
Abstract In this paper we study the relationship between the timing of tracking of pupils into vocational and academic secondary education and gender differences in educational attainment and income. It is argued that in a comprehensive system, where students are tracked into vocational and academic schools relatively late (age 15–16), girls are more likely to choose the academic track than boys. We exploit the Finnish comprehensive school reform of the 1970s to analyse this hypothesis. This changed the Finnish school system from a selective to a comprehensive structure and postponed tracking from the age of 10–11 to 15–16. Since the reform was not implemented at the same time throughout the country, we can observe members of the same cohorts under both systems. The shift to a comprehensive system was found to increase gender differences in the probability of choosing an academic secondary education and of continuing onto academic tertiary education. Moreover, the reform decreased the gender wage gap in adult income by four percentage points.