Policymakers often argue that increasing access to health care is one crucial avenue for decreasing gender inequality in the developing world. Although this is generally true in the cross section, time series evidence does not always point to the same conclusion. This paper analyzes the...

Where social norms favor gender segregation, firms may find it costly to employ both men and women. If the costs of integration are largely fixed, firms will integrate only if their expected number of female employees under integration exceeds some threshold. Motivated by a simple model of firm...

Gender differences in health and education are a concern for a number of developing countries. While standard theory predicts human capital should respond to market returns, social norms (e.g., disapproval of women working outside the home) may weaken or even sever this link for girls. Though...

India's male-biased sex ratio has worsened over the past several decades. In combination with the increased availability of prenatal sex-diagnostic technology, the declining fertility rate is a hypothesized factor. Suppose a couple strongly wants to have at least one son. At the natural sex...

That unmarried individuals die at a faster rate than married individuals at all ages is well documented. Unmarried women in developing countries face particularly severe vulnerabilities, so that excess mortality faced by the unmarried is more extreme for women in these regions compared to...

While a growing body of evidence documents large gender disparities in health care and related social insurance programs, little is known about what drives these disparities. We leverage administrative data and random assignment of doctors to patients inherent within the workers' compensation...

We study a unique grading policy at a large US public university allowing students to mask their letter grades into a "Pass", after having observed their original grade. Using administrative transcript records, we find that female students are substantially less likely to mask their grades than...

Recent research shows the negative impact of discrimination not only on the targets of discrimination but also on the economy as a whole. Racial and gender inequality can limit the entire economy's productive capacity and innovation outcomes. Using new data from NSF's Survey of Earned Doctorates...

Why has the expansion of women's economic and political rights coincided with economic development? This paper investigates this question, focusing on a key economic right for women: property rights. The basic hypothesis is that the process of development (i.e., capital accumulation and...

This paper uses a new data source, American Mathematics Competitions, to examine the gender gap among high school students at very high achievement levels. The data bring out several new facts. There is a large gender gap that widens dramatically at percentiles above those that can be examined...