Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood
Boys who grow up in poor families are less likely to work as adults than girls who grow up in similar circumstances, according to a new report from economists at Harvard and Stanford universities. Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood, the most recent study from the Equality of Opportunity Project, finds that the gender divide is especially wide in heavily segregated communities; in Baltimore, for instance, about 71 percent of girls born to poor families in the early 1980s were working at age 30, compared to just 58 percent of boys. The authors suggest that boys are more susceptible than girls to the harmful effects of growing up in neighborhoods with high rates of incarceration and single-parent households.