Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/145146 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10012
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Sleep studies suggest that girls go to sleep earlier, are more active in the morning, and cope with sleep deprivation better than boys. We provide the first causal evidence on how gender differences in sleep cycles can help explain the gender performance gap. We exploit over 240,000 assignment-level grades from a quasi-experiment with a community of middle and high schools where students' schedules alternated between morning and afternoon start times each month. Relative to girls, we find that boys' achievement benefits from a later start time. For classes taught at the beginning of the school day, our estimates explain up to 16% of the gender performance gap.
Subjects: 
gender performance gap
gender difference in sleep cycles
school start time
JEL: 
H52
I20
I21
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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