Data and Code for: When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women's College Major Choices

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Avery Calkins, RAND; Ariel J. Binder, Census Bureau; Dana Shaat, American Institutes for Research; Brenden Timpe, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Version: View help for Version V1

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Project Citation:

Calkins, Avery, Binder, Ariel J., Shaat, Dana, and Timpe, Brenden. Data and Code for: When Sarah Meets Lawrence: The Effects of Coeducation on Women’s College Major Choices. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-06-20. https://doi.org/10.3886/E172621V1

Project Description

Summary: We leverage variation in the adoption of coeducation by U.S. women's colleges to study how exposure to a mixed-gender collegiate environment affects women's human capital investments. Our event-study analyses of newly collected historical data find a 3.0-3.5 percentage-point (30-33%) decline in the share of women majoring in STEM. While coeducation caused a large influx of male peers and modest increase in male faculty, we find no evidence that it altered the composition of the female student body or other gender-neutral inputs. Extrapolation of our main estimate suggests that coeducational environments explain 36% of the current gender gap in STEM.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: gender; STEM; coeducation; gender gap; higher education

JEL Classification:
      I21 Analysis of Education
      I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
      I24 Education and Inequality
      J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
      J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 1965 – 2016

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-06-20]

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DDI 2.5

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