Boys are Still Falling Behind Girls in School - Why This Matters by Scott Stolz, CFP, RICP (week 61)

 

In 2000, Christina Hoff Summers published a book entitled "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men”.  If you don’t want to read the entire book, you can find a YouTube video that lays out her premise for the book (War on Boys | 5 Minute Videos | PragerU).  In short, she argues that our public schools have evolved to the point where typical boy behavior is viewed as disruptive to the learning process and therefore is actively discouraged.  Girl behavior – attentively sitting still and listening – is what is rewarded.  Consequently, boys are increasingly underperforming girls in the K-12 years.  And since they underperform in those years, they are less equipped for college, which in turn makes them less prepared to get a job in today’s economy.  This educational failing of boys is often referred to as “the boy crisis”. 

Not surprisingly, this theory quickly became controversial.  In a world where women still earn less than men and are a distinct minority in both politics and the boardroom, it’s understandable that many would quickly dismiss a “boy crisis”.  In fact, a google search of the “myth of the boy crises” will return numerous articles that claim that boys are doing just fine and therefore don’t need any special attention (The Myth of ‘The Boy Crisis’ - National Organization for Women). 

No matter which side you take in this debate, there is no denying the following facts:

·       In 2022, males age 16-24 were 46% more likely than women to either not be in high school or not have a high school degree¹

·       In the 2022-23 school year, only 84.9% of all boys graduated high school vs. 89.9% of all girls ²

·       Girls have scored higher than boys in every 12^th grade NAEP reading assessment in every year since 1992 ³

^·               Women now represent 59% of all college graduates and receive 63% of all graduate degrees ⁴

Some may look at these statistics and see them simply as evidence of the remarkable educational progress women have made. And that progress should be celebrated. But education isn't a zero-sum contest. We should all be concerned about this trend because we should want both our daughters and our sons to succeed.  It’s not good for our society if an increasing number of young men feel as though they are being left behind. 

Let’s consider a somewhat provocative and potentially controversial question:

Will college educated women elect to marry a man without a college degree?

If 60% of all college graduates are women, that means that one out of every three women may find this question a reality.  When I’ve posed this question to many women I know, I typically get a very interesting response. No one has ever given me an immediate “yes, I would” answer.  Nor has anyone given me an immediate “no, I wouldn’t” answer.  Typically, I get an answer like “as long as the man has some ambition and a plan, the actual education does not really matter.”  But let’s face it, a college graduate is more likely to fit that description than someone that didn’t get past high school or didn’t graduate from high school at all. 

And if even 25% of all college educated women elect not to marry someone with less education, then we are going to have a lot of unmarried, poorly educated men.  Under what scenario is that good for society?  Today 40% of all babies are born to unmarried mothers, up from 32% in 2000.⁵   That statistic alone should alarm everyone because on average, children born to unmarried parents experience substantially poorer educational outcomes than children born to married parents.  A key measure of academic success is how “on track” a student is at the end of each grade level versus national benchmarks for math and reading proficiency.  A 2024 report by the Institute for Family Studies found that children born to married parents are significantly more likely to be “on track” at every academic life stage than children born to unmarried parents.⁶ 

This disadvantage can continue well beyond the school years.  That same study concluded that children born to married parents earn on average 7% more in income than children born to single parents.  The fact of the matter is that there is a direct correlation between the level of education and financial wealth.  A 2022 U.S. Census study on poverty found that 24.7% of people in poverty are in families headed by an unmarried mother vs. just 5.4% headed by married parents.  And while both boys and girls are disadvantaged by being part of a single parent household, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that looked at boys and girls in the same single parent household found that the boys were more likely than their female siblings to have disciplinary issues, have lower academic results and more likely to drop out of high school.⁷

While higher education is an indicator of financial success, it is not a requirement.  It is certainly possible to support a family without a college degree – or even a high school degree.  However, it’s getting harder and harder.  The higher paying vocations that do not require a degree and have been predominately filled by young men, continue to disappear.  In 1960, construction, manufacturing and mining jobs made up 35% of the jobs in the U.S.  Today those three categories combine for less than 15%.⁸

The most heavily male dominated profession in America today is truck driving.  According to the 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 3.53 million truck drivers, of which 92.3% are male.  How is that job going to fare when autonomous driving becomes common?

Today, 43.6% of all jobs in America are categorized as management, professional and related occupations.  These are jobs that typically require a certain level of education – often a college degree.  Almost 50% of all employed women fall into this category vs. less than 40% of all employed men.  The growing educational gap between men and women is already shaping our demographics.

What Should Be Done?

The first step is to recognize that boys underperforming girls in the classroom is a problem.  The facts speak for themselves.  There’s widespread disagreement as to why boys struggle more than girls academically.  Those supporting the “boy crisis” theory say that today’s classroom is not designed to help boys succeed.  It has too many female teachers that expect female behavior, too much wrote learning, a reduction in recess hours and reading lists that often don’t appeal to boys.  Those that claim the “boy crisis” is a myth mostly point to other social pressures outside of the classroom that are impacting some boys desire to study and learn.  It’s hard to fix a problem if we can’t agree on the cause of the problem, or even if there is a problem at all.

I believe that encouraging kids to read is a good first step.  Everyone benefits from reading more.  For years, United Way organizations have promoted getting books into lower-income homes, citing international research showing a remarkable correlation between books in the home and educational attainment. These studies have found that children from households, with even just 20 books in the house, obtain on average three more years of education than children from bookless households⁹.  In elementary school I was allowed to read what I wanted.  During the summer break, we were challenged to read a specific number of books.  We were recognized for hitting various numbers of books read.  The length or the subject didn’t matter.  It just had to be a book.  I enjoyed both the challenge and the competition, so I learned the bus route to our public library.  When I got to high school there was required reading.  Almost all of it was boring.  I don’t care if Catcher in the Rye and The Grapes of Wrath are literary classics.  I thought they were boring.  I read them only because I had to.  But my elementary school years had already shaped my joy of reading.  Therefore, during my high school years, in my free hours I read books like The Exorcist, The Godfather and Carrie.  Let kids read for school the books they want to read.  And them have them write a report on each book.  I’m quite sure boys will select different books than girls.  And that should be OK.  Perhaps that alone will keep both boys and girls more engaged in school.

 

 

 

 

¹ NCES Condition of Education, Status Dropout Rates, 2022 ACS.

² Public high school averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR), by sex, race/ethnicity, and state or jurisdiction: School year 2022-23

³ NAEP Reading Grade 12 : National Trends and Student Skills

⁴ NCES Digest Table 318.10: degree completion shares by sex, projected 2023–24.

⁵ 40% of All Babies Born in U.S. Last Year Were to Unmarried Mothers, Data Shows | Institute for Family Studies

⁶ New Research Confirms Having Married Parents Helps Kids Get Ahead | Institute for Family Studies

⁷ -10bp Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational OutcomesThis is an updated version of NBER Working Paper #22267 of the same title. We thank Josh Angrist, Marianne Bertrand, Raj Chetty, John Ham, Nathan Hendren, Louis Kaplow, Mikael Lindahl, Jeremy Majerovitz, Richard Murnane, Jessica Pan, Kjell Salvanes, Till von Wachter, and numerous seminar participants at AEFP, CESifo Program on the Economics of Education, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Harvard University, Hitotsubashi University, IZA, Maastricht University, Miami University, MIT, National University of Singapore, the NBER Education Program, Northwestern University, Queens University, Simon Fraser University, University of Chicago, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, University of Leicester, University of Oregon, University of Quebec at Montreal, University of Southampton, University of Toronto, Uppsala University, Washington University in Saint Louis, and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation 60th Anniversary Conference on Inequality and Health for valuable suggestions that helped to improve the paper. Autor acknowledges support from the Russell Sage Foundation (Grant #85-12-07). Figlio and Roth acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation and the Institute for Education Sciences (CALDER grant), and Figlio acknowledges support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Wasserman acknowledges support from the NSF Graduation Research Fellowship, NIA Grant #T32-AG000186, and NICHD Grant #HD007339-30. We are grateful to the Florida Departments of Education and Health for providing the de-identified, matched data used in this analysis. The conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the positions of the Florida Departments of Education and Health or those of our funders.

⁸ BLS The Economics Daily 2026: employed women/men 25+ with bachelor’s degree or higher through 2025.

⁹ International Literacy Day 2015 - United Way For Greater Austin