Why do boys perform worse than girls in reading literacy? Evidences from PISA survey 2018

Abstract

The present study analyses the main factors behind the differences in test scores on reading literacy in Italy between male and female 15 years old students performing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method (Blinder, 1973) on the data from the OECD PISA 2018 survey, in which reading was the main subject assessed. In order to estimate the amount of the differential between male and female average wages, we have applied the decomposition of Oaxaca and Blinder (Oaxaca 1973, Blinder 1973). Through this method we distinguish which part is due to differences in characteristics included in model estimations and which part is due to gender “discrimination”. Our results suggest that the gender gap in reading is mostly attributable to explained component, while the variables related to the discrimination effect are those related to different habits between girls and boys.