In this paper, we identify the contribution of differences in test effort to gender gaps and socioeconomic gaps in achievement. We leverage question response time and random question order to obtain causal estimates of the effect of student effort on performance. Subsequently, we evaluate how differences in performance change when students would have made equal time investments. We find that effort explains around 25 percent of the socioeconomic gap in math and reading. For gender, correcting for effort closes around 18 percent of the reading gap while it increases the advantage of boys in math. Looking at average achievement, gender differences in effort can explain 49 percent of the gender achievement gap. We also show that the returns to response time are strongly underestimated by fixed effects models.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.