Data and Code for: Seeking the “Missing Women” of Economics with the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Tatyana Avilova, Bowdoin College; Claudia Goldin, Harvard University. Department of Economics

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
JEP_ReplicationFiles			07/04/2024 09:35:PM

Project Citation:

Avilova, Tatyana, and Goldin, Claudia. Data and Code for: Seeking the “Missing Women” of Economics with the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge . Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2024. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-08-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/E201186V1

Project Description

Summary: Economics is among the most popular undergraduate majors, especially in top colleges and universities. However, even at the best research universities and liberal arts colleges men outnumber women by two to one, and overall there are about 2.5 males to every female economics major. We discuss why women major in economics less than men and describe a project to increase the number of female economics majors. The Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE) Challenge was a randomized controlled trial, with 20 treatment and 68 control schools, that we ran for one year in AY 2015-16 to evaluate the impact of light-touch interventions to recruit and retain female economics majors. Treatment schools received funding, guidance, and access to networking with other treatment schools to implement programs such as providing better information to incoming students about the application of economics, exposing students to role models, providing mentoring, and updating course content and pedagogy. Using 2001-2021 data from the NCES-Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) on graduating undergraduates (BAs), we find that UWE was effective in increasing the fraction of female BAs who majored in economics relative to men in liberal arts colleges. Large universities did not show an impact of the treatment, although those that implemented their own RCTs showed moderate success in encouraging more women to major in economics. We discuss what we believe worked in the UWE program and speculate on the reasons for differential treatment impact.

Funding Sources: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (G-2014-14504)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Randomized control trial; postsecondary education; higher education; diversity

JEL Classification:
      A22 Economic Education and Teaching of Economics: Undergraduate
      C93 Field Experiments
      I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 1984 – 2021 (Descriptive statistics of trends in women's representation in undergraduate economics); 2001 – 2021 (Analysis of UWE Challenge impact)

Universe:

Figure 1: "top-100" institutions (universities and liberal arts colleges) in the United States from the combined 2011 and 2013 US News and World Report rankings.

Figure 2: all institutions granting at least one undergraduate degree in economics in the United States; "top-100" institutions (universities and liberal arts colleges) in the United States from the combined 2011 and 2013 US News and World Report rankings.

Figure 3: 88 institutions (20 treatment and 68 control institutions) included in the study.

Table 1: 88 institutions (20 treatment and 68 control institutions) included in the study (sub-samples specified in the columns and table notes).

Graph in Online Appendix 2: liberal arts colleges in the 88-institution study sample.

Table in Online Appendix 5: 88 institutions (20 treatment and 68 control institutions) included in the study (sub-samples specified in the columns and table notes).

Data Type(s): administrative records data

Methodology

Response Rate: There are 344 colleges and universities that graduated on average at least 15 economics majors between 2011-2013. All 344 institutions were sent an invitation letter to participate in the project. 167 institutions (48.5%) responded with interest. Of these, 88 institutions (52.6%) that graduates on average at least 30 economics majors between 2011-2013 were selected for the study randomization. 20 institutions (22.7%) were randomized into the treatment group, the remaining 68 institutions were in the control group. Data for analysis was collected from all 88 institutions (100%).

Sampling: The study sample of 88 institutions was ordered based on their ranking in the 2011 and 2013 US News & World Report and then split into 4 "clusters" or strata of 22 schools. The selection involved taking five schools randomly from each of the four clusters.

Data Source:

Data on college degrees were downloaded from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2023). Data can be downloaded from https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/DataFiles.aspx. Data is accessed by selecting "all years" in the "year" dropdown menu and selecting "completions" in the "all surveys" dropdown menu. The specific data files are titled "Awards/degrees conferred by program (6-digit CIP code), award level, race/ethnicity, and gender." Stata Data File, Stata program, and dictionary were downloaded for these datasets for years 1984 to 2021. We use the revised data files (cYEAR_a_rv_data_stata.DTA) for years 2005 to 2020.

A copy of the data is provided as part of the this archive. The data are in the public domain.

Scales:

N/A

Weights: None used.

Unit(s) of Observation: Postsecondary education institution

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Published Versions

V1 [2024-08-12]

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