I've written before about simple interventions designed to close the gender gap in economics. For instance, there was this post about an intervention that involved providing students with "information on career prospects, average earnings, and grade distributions", which had reasonably large effects. However, I questioned why providing this information was not routine anyway. Nevertheless, it is worth following up on, and the AEA Papers and Proceedings last year had several papers that described similar simple interventions to reduce the gender gap.
First was this article by Todd Pugatch and Elizabeth Schroeder (both Oregon State University), that tested a variety of information interventions, with students assigned to one of five groups:
(i) Control: no message.
(ii) Basic information: encouragement message based on description of economics major on departmental website.
(iii) Earnings information: basic information, plus information on earnings of economics graduates.
(iv) AEA video: basic information, plus link to AEA career video.
(v) OSU video: basic information, plus link to video testimonials by OSU economics students and alumni.
Their sample is over 2200 students enrolled in introductory economics at Oregon State University, during the 2018-19 academic year. Their main indicators of interest was whether the student was enrolled in an economics major in winter 2020, some two to four semesters after the intervention. Comparing the different treatment groups with controls, they find that:
...basic information increased the likelihood of majoring in economics by 1.9 percentage points, significant at 5 percent... This effect was driven by male students, for whom the magnitude was 2.5 percentage points, also significant at 5 percent... The earnings information increased economics majors by 1.5 percentage points, significant at 10 percent... These magnitudes are similar to the control means...
None of the treatments had a statistically significant effect on majoring in economics for female students... and the point estimate for basic information is near zero.
Yikes! So, these simple information interventions encouraged male students to do an economics major (almost doubling the number of male economics majors), but had no effect at all on female students. This is a worry, and contradicts the study by Li described in the first post I mentioned above. However, it is likely that the type of information you provide to students matters, and it may be that female students might not be as attracted by the career and earnings prospects that majoring in economics provides (more on that point in a future post).
The second article in AEA Papers and Proceedings was by Kelly Bedard (University of California, Santa Barbara), Jacqueline Dodd (Analysis Group), and Shelly Lundberg (University of California Santa Barbara). They also investigated an information intervention, as they describe:
...students earning a C or better in the introductory “principles of microeconomics’’ course (Econ 1) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) were sent a letter describing the two majors offered by the department—“economics” and “economics and accounting”—and inviting the student to an informational meeting about the majors and their career prospects. A random sample of students earning a B or better were instead sent a treatment letter that augmented the baseline letter by adding positive feedback about the student’s performance in Econ 1 and encouragement to consider majoring in economics.
They look at the impact of the intervention on attendance at the informational meeting and the probability of enrolling in one of the two majors. Their sample is over 2300 students enrolled between 2015 and 2017, and they find that:
...treatment increases the probability that a student attends the information meeting by 6.1 percentage points for men and 5.8 percentage points for women relative to those who receive the invitation to the meeting without personal encouragement... Treatment increases the probability that men major in economics by 5.8 percentage points... and that women major in economics and accounting by 5.4 percentage points... For neither gender, however, is the effect of treatment on the probability of choosing either major significant.
So, students provided with information are more likely to follow up by attending the informational evening, and there is weak evidence that it increases the chance of majoring in economics. Notice that the effects are similar in size for both male and female students. However, they are not statistically significant. But, even if they were significant effects, I think this might increase the gender gap in economics because, as Bedard et al. note, most 'economics and accounting' majors go on to a job in the accounting profession, not economics. So, it appears that this information intervention might steer female students away from jobs in economics, which is the opposite of the intention of the intervention.
The third article in AEA Papers and Proceedings was by Andrea Chambers (Michigan State University) and co-authors. They investigate two interventions:
The first is a series of videos and infographics that provide information about what economics is, who studies economics, and career options with an economics degree. Each video features diverse MSU undergraduates, alumni, and faculty... The second intervention is a letter from the department chair that provides information on the grade distributions in the introductory courses.
The outcome measure they focus on is self-reported probabilities of taking another economics class, and majoring in economics (based on a survey conducted later). Their sample is over 3500 Michigan State University students enrolled in introductory microeconomics or macroeconomics in 2020, although only 2209 completed the final survey (and the low response was likely due to the pandemic). Chambers et al. find that:
...the primary effects of the treatment are practically small (relative to the mean), with standard errors that include zero.
In other words, the interventions had no statistically significant effect on the self-reported probability that students would take economics, or would major in economics. Chambers et al. also show no significant effect on actual enrolments in economics, from a more limited sample.
Overall, this is not good news for simple information interventions, in terms of their ability to reduce the gender gap in economics. At best, they seem to have no effect, although they may also make the problem worse. Either way, it may not be quite so simple to change preferences, or we need to look more thoroughly at the type of information that is being provided, and tailor it better.
Or perhaps, we discard the simple information interventions and do something else instead. In this 2018 post, I talked about about an intervention that used guest speakers to provide role models, which appeared to have a large and significant effect (and was something I have tried out in my own ECONS101 class). Given that the evaluations I described in this post showed that the earlier research on information interventions may have been overly optimistic, some more replications of simple role modelling interventions would be a good next step.
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