Gender gaps in cognitive and social-emotional skills in early primary grades: Evidence from rural Indonesia

Nozomi Nakajima, Haeil Jung, Menno Pradhan, Amer Hasan*, Angela Kinnell, Sally Brinkman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

289 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper examines the magnitude and source of gender gaps in cognitive and social-emotional skills in early primary grades in rural Indonesia. Relative to boys, girls score more than 0.17 SD higher in tests of language and mathematics (cognitive skills) and between 0.18 and 0.27 SD higher in measures of social competence and emotional maturity (social-emotional skills). We use Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to investigate the extent to which gender differences in early schooling and parenting practices explain these gender gaps in skills. For cognitive skills, differences in early schooling between boys and girls explain between 9% and 11% of the gender gap whereas differences in parenting practices explain merely 3%–5% of the gender gap. This decomposition result is driven largely by children living in villages with high-quality preschools. In contrast, for social-emotional skills, differences in parenting styles toward boys and girls explain between 13% and 17% of the gender gap, while differences in early schooling explain only 0%–6% of the gender gap.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere12931
Pages (from-to)1-17
Number of pages17
JournalDevelopmental Science
Volume23
Issue number5
Early online date10 Dec 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2020

Funding

This study was funded by the DIME‐administered IE2I TF (TF018488). Data collection was partially funded by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the Dutch Education Support Program Trust Fund (TF057272). Haeil Jung's contribution was partly supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF‐2016S1A3A2924956). We thank Dedy Junaedi, Upik Sabainingrum, Anas Sutisna, Lulus Kusbudiharjo, and Mulyana for managing the fieldwork. Mayla Safuro Lestari Putri and Mulyana provided excellent research assistance.

FundersFunder number
Dutch Education Support Program Trust FundTF057272
Ministry of Education
National Research Foundation of KoreaNRF‐2016S1A3A2924956
National Research Foundation of Korea

    Keywords

    • cognitive skills
    • early childhood
    • economic development
    • gender
    • human capital
    • social-emotional skills

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Gender gaps in cognitive and social-emotional skills in early primary grades: Evidence from rural Indonesia'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this