All geared towards success? Cultural origins of gender gaps in student achievement
利用瑞典第二代移民数据，研究发现强调成就、竞争和竞争的文化维度显著预测了女孩相对于男孩的成绩劣势，且父母为成就导向文化背景的孩子会选择更高质量的学校，男孩从中获益更多。
Although geographical and temporal variations in gender achievement gaps have received considerable attention, the role of culture in explaining this variation is not well understood. We exploit a large Swedish administrative data set to study gender gaps in education among second-generation immigrant youth with different cultural backgrounds. Guided by hypotheses we derive from the economics literature on gender differences and gender convergence, we explore the predictive power of a set of cultural dimensions including achievement orientation , acceptance of inequality, risk avoidance, and long-term orientation. Using a variety of empirical tests that refine the classical epidemiological approach, we find that the central cultural dimension that matters for gender gaps in student achievement is the extent to which a society emphasizes ambition, competition, and achievement, which is strongly predictive of a relative achievement disadvantage of girls compared with boys. Exploring factors that may explain the results, we find that parents from achievement-oriented cultures choose higher quality schools for their children, and that boys benefit more from exposure to higher quality schools than girls do. Using PISA data to probe external validity, we find qualitatively and quantitatively remarkably similar results in a very different sample of second-generation immigrant youth.