Long-Term Consequences of Gender Segregation: The Effect of Single-Sex Education on Income

Abstract

The existing literature surrounding the efficacy of single-sex education focuses largely on short-term, academic outcomes associated with single-sex education. This study provides a different perspective by examining the longterm effect of single-sex schooling on income later in life for both males and females. It uses a sample of private schools from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88), which follows a nationally representative group of students who were in eighth grade in 1988 to the year 2000, about eight years after their high school graduation. This paper finds that attending a single-sex school has a positive and significant impact on the earnings of males, but no significant effect on the earnings of females.