Gender gaps in education

This chapter reviews the growing body of research in economics which concentrates on the education gender gap and its evolution, over time and across countries. The survey first focuses on gender differentials in the historical period that roughly goes from 1850 to the 1940s and documents the deep determinants of the early phase of female education expansion, including preindustrial conditions, religion, and family and kinship patterns. Next, the survey describes the stylized facts of contemporaneous gender gaps in education, from the 1950s to the present day, accounting for several alternative measures of attainment and achievement and for geographic and temporal differentiations. The determinants of the gaps are then summarized, while keeping a strong emphasis on an historical perspective and disentangling factors related to the labor market, family formation, psychological elements, and societal cultural norms. A discussion follows of the implications of the education gender gap for multiple realms, from economic growth to family life, taking into account the potential for reverse causation. Special attention is devoted to the persistency of gender gaps in the STEM and economics fields

Gender Gaps in Education

This chapter reviews the growing body of research in economics which concentrates on the education gender gap and its evolution, over time and across countries. The survey first focuses on gender differentials in the historical period that roughly goes from 1850 to the 1940s and documents the deep determinants of the early phase of female education expansion, including preindustrial conditions, religion, and family and kinship patterns. Next, the survey describes the stylized facts of contemporaneous gender gaps in education, from the 1950s to the present day, accounting for several alternative measures of attainment and achievement and for geographic and temporal differentiations. The determinants of the gaps are then summarized, while keeping a strong emphasis on an historical perspective and disentangling factors related to the labor market, family formation, psychological elements, and societal cultural norms. A discussion follows of the implications of the education gender gap for multiple realms, from economic growth to family life, taking into account the potential for reverse causation. Special attention is devoted to the persistency of gender gaps in the STEM and economics fields

The Perceived Benefits of Height: Strength, Dominance, Social Concern, and Knowledge among Bolivian Native Amazonians

Research in industrial countries suggests that, with no other knowledge about a person, positive traits are attributed to taller people and correspondingly, that taller people have slightly better socioeconomic status (SES). However, research in some non-industrialized contexts has shown no correlation or even negative correlations between height and socioeconomic outcomes. It remains unclear whether positive traits remain attributed to taller people in such contexts. To address this question, here we report the results of a study in a foraging-farming society of native Amazonians in Bolivia (Tsimane’)–a group in which we have previously shown little association between height and socioeconomic outcomes. We showed 24 photographs of pairs of Tsimane’ women, men, boys, and girls to 40 women and 40 men >16 years of age. We presented four behavioral scenarios to each participant and asked them to point to the person in the photograph with greater strength, dominance, social concern, or knowledge. The pairs in the photographs were of the same sex and age, but one person was shorter. Tsimane’ women and men attributed greater strength, dominance, and knowledge to taller girls and boys, but they did not attribute most positive traits to taller adults, except for strength, and more social concern only when women assessed other women in the photographs. These results raise a puzzle: why would Tsimane’ attribute positive traits to tall children, but not tall adults? We propose three potential explanations: adults’ expectations about the more market integrated society in which their children will grow up, height as a signal of good child health, and children’s greater variation in the traits assessed corresponding to maturational stages

Landownership Concentration and the Expansion of Education

This paper studies the eect of landownership concentration on school enrollment for nineteenth century Prussia. Prussia is an interesting laboratory given its decentralized educational system and the presence of heterogeneous agricultural institutions. We nd that landownership concentration, a proxy for the institution of serfdom, has a negative eect on schooling. This eect diminishes substantially towards the end of the century. Causality of this relationship is conrmed by introducing soil texture to identify exogenous farm-size variation. Panel estimates further rule out unobserved heterogeneity. We present several robustness checks which shed some light on possible mechanisms

Landownership concentration and the expansion of education

We study the relationship between large landownership concentration and the expansion of mass education in nineteenth-century Prussia. Cross-sectional estimates show a negative association between landownership concentration and enrollment rates. Fixed-effects panel estimates indicate that regions with an initially stronger landownership concentration exhibit increasing enrollment rates. This relationship is not driven by differences in the supply of schooling. We argue that the implementation of agricultural reforms including the stepwise abolition of serfdom is an important driver of the change in enrollment. The results are consistent with the interpretation that emancipation from labor coercion increased the private demand for education

Data and metadata management automation for an effective approach to sharing environmental data

In the market of geospatial systems there are several applications that handle data. Some of these components are oriented towards managing and storing data, map visualizations, and data streams, while other components are oriented towards data description and the creation of metadata. Neither of these applications offers users an overview of the process leading to the data creation up to its export to the end user. In the existing literature there are attempts to automate metadating - the term given to descriptions of data. Some companies are also trying an approach that allows, by means of workflow systems, the automation of the creation of a geospatial dataset. As a result, users of geospatial data are increasingly looking for a more structured process of managing geospatial data and metadata, and any tool that handles this process is likely to find reasonable success within this community. Public entities, mainly local ones, are often called on to deal with regulations that require web systems that reveal parameters of any given territory to users/citizens. Likewise, research organizations, especially those dealing with the environment, increasingly find themselves analyzing spatial data. Difficulties that arise when handling such data can be overcome using the approach we are proposing, which involves using a single tool that handles all the necessary steps in exporting spatial data. In this paper we present several methodologies used to manage geospatial data and metadata by means of GeoInt, a middleware tool developed at CNR-IIA that manages geospatial data produced in different research projects. GeoInt is a middleware program offering basic services that permit users to define both data and metadata. It allows users to manage map servers, and allows them to control the download and sharing processes. This research illustrates the ways in which GeoInt has been improved to minimize metadata editing by its users

Data and metadata management automation for an effective approach to sharing environmental data

In the market of geospatial systems there are several applications that handle data. Some of these components are oriented towards managing and storing data, map visualizations, and data streams, while other components are oriented towards data description and the creation of metadata. Neither of these applications offers users an overview of the process leading to the data creation up to its export to the end user. In the existing literature there are attempts to automate metadating - the term given to descriptions of data. Some companies are also trying an approach that allows, by means of workflow systems, the automation of the creation of a geospatial dataset. As a result, users of geospatial data are increasingly looking for a more structured process of managing geospatial data and metadata, and any tool that handles this process is likely to find reasonable success within this community. Public entities, mainly local ones, are often called on to deal with regulations that require web systems that reveal parameters of any given territory to users/citizens. Likewise, research organizations, especially those dealing with the environment, increasingly find themselves analyzing spatial data. Difficulties that arise when handling such data can be overcome using the approach we are proposing, which involves using a single tool that handles all the necessary steps in exporting spatial data. In this paper we present several methodologies used to manage geospatial data and metadata by means of GeoInt, a middleware tool developed at CNR-IIA that manages geospatial data produced in different research projects. GeoInt is a middleware program offering basic services that permit users to define both data and metadata. It allows users to manage map servers, and allows them to control the download and sharing processes. This research illustrates the ways in which GeoInt has been improved to minimize metadata editing by its users

Data and metadata management automation for an effective approach to sharing environmental data

In the market of geospatial systems there are several applications that handle data. Some of these components are oriented towards managing and storing data, map visualizations, and data streams, while other components are oriented towards data description and the creation of metadata. Neither of these applications offers users an overview of the process leading to the data creation up to its export to the end user. In the existing literature there are attempts to automate metadating - the term given to descriptions of data. Some companies are also trying an approach that allows, by means of workflow systems, the automation of the creation of a geospatial dataset. As a result, users of geospatial data are increasingly looking for a more structured process of managing geospatial data and metadata, and any tool that handles this process is likely to find reasonable success within this community. Public entities, mainly local ones, are often called on to deal with regulations that require web systems that reveal parameters of any given territory to users/citizens. Likewise, research organizations, especially those dealing with the environment, increasingly find themselves analyzing spatial data. Difficulties that arise when handling such data can be overcome using the approach we are proposing, which involves using a single tool that handles all the necessary steps in exporting spatial data. In this paper we present several methodologies used to manage geospatial data and metadata by means of GeoInt, a middleware tool developed at CNR-IIA that manages geospatial data produced in different research projects. GeoInt is a middleware program offering basic services that permit users to define both data and metadata. It allows users to manage map servers, and allows them to control the download and sharing processes. This research illustrates the ways in which GeoInt has been improved to minimize metadata editing by its users