Using novel text data, essays written at the age of 11, we construct an index of traditional gender attitudes for a representative sample of girls born in Britain in 1958. We link this index to outcomes over the life cycle. Conditional on a large set of covariates including cognitive and non-cognitive skills, we find that traditional gender attitudes at an early age reduce lifetime earnings by 2.6%. The effect is primarily driven by reduced educational attainment, selection into low-paid occupations, as well as earlier family formation. We find that girls’ traditional gender attitudes depend on the region they live in, as well as parental education and the gender of the siblings they grow up with. |
