Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/231330 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 793
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
Abstract: 
This paper presents the first empirical evidence of the causal impact of individuals' education on their attitudes towards traditional gender roles. We employ two national panel datasets from the UK and Switzerland and a repeated cross-sectional dataset with information from 13 Western European countries for the analysis. The causal impact of education on gender role attitudes is estimated by exploiting the exogenous variation in individuals' education induced by the compulsory school reforms undertaken in European countries in the second half of the 20th century. We find evidence that an additional year of education instigates egalitarian gender role attitudes equivalent of 0.1-0.3 of a standard deviation. While education's moderating effect is particularly prominent among women, no evidence of effect heterogeneity is found concerning the individuals' religiosity. Our findings are robust to numerous checks performed and are briefly discussed for their policy relevance.
Subjects: 
Gender role attitudes
education
compulsory schooling reforms
IV strategy
JEL: 
J16
J78
C26
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.