Gender gaps in patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality are smaller among younger cohorts

Abstract

Recent empirical literature has documented that men and women differ systematically in measures of patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality in many countries throughout the world. These gender gaps have been associated with variation in economic and social development. However, little is known about how these gender gaps evolve and whether they systematically vary across age cohorts. To examine this question, we analyze how within-country gender gaps in patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality have evolved. We compare gender gaps across country-period-cohort cells using two survey datasets covering 460,000 people in more than 100 countries. Our results document that gender gaps in patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality are smaller among younger cohorts, and suggest that this decline can be attributed to variation across birth cohorts rather than age groups. These findings challenge the conjecture that gender gaps widen as countries develop and instead point to an ongoing decline in the differences between men and women.