ResearchEducation & Skills

Why gender gaps in noncognitive skills matter in education

Oct 8, 2026
Christopher Pulliam
Boy rests head against palm in classroom

This research is part of ongoing work by Christopher Pulliam, a former graduate fellow at AIBM and a current postdoctoral scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality.

Key takeaways

  • Students with better noncognitive skills tend to have better educational outcomes, including completing a four-year college degree. Gender gaps in these skills are associated with differences in these outcomes.
  • Externalizing behavior is especially predictive: children who later earn a college degree score 0.64 SD better—meaning fewer problems on childhood measures of disobedience, impulsiveness, and related behaviors—than high school graduates. For comparison, the gap by mother’s marital status at birth is 0.37 SD.
  • The externalizing gap is concentrated in elementary school: boys score 0.35 SD worse than girls at ages 6–8 and 0.25 SD worse at ages 9–11, with no meaningful gap by ages 12–17.
  • Positive behavior displays a somewhat different pattern: gaps emerge in elementary school and persist in middle and high school. Boys score worse by about 0.20 SD from ages 6-8 on measures of curiosity, getting along well with other children, and related behaviors. The gap grows to about 0.28 SD from ages 9–14 and shrinks to 0.20 SD from ages 15–17.
  • Because these gaps emerge early, intervention may need to begin in early childhood or elementary school, though more research is needed on what works.

Young men are less likely to enroll in college and finish their degree. Pursuing postsecondary education requires significant time and financial resources, but it also requires organization, motivation, discipline, and interpersonal communication. Students must register for classes, keep track of assignments, interact with instructors and peers, and meet administrative deadlines.

Research suggests that the development of these “noncognitive” skills has roots in childhood, and numerous studies show that childhood circumstances can have profound consequences for adult outcomes. There are also differences by gender. Recent AIBM research shows that these gaps are already visible at school entry: girls enter kindergarten ahead of boys in social-emotional skills such as self-regulation, paying attention, and getting along with others.

This brief complements that work by examining how these gaps in related noncognitive skills develop across childhood and how they are associated with educational attainment in adulthood. This dynamic provides an opportunity for policymakers: well-designed interventions can set children up for success in adulthood.

Defining and measuring noncognitive skills

Whether referred to as soft skills, social skills, or noncognitive skills, evidence shows that these skills are important for educational attainment and are increasingly valued in the labor market. I use the term “noncognitive” to emphasize the distinction from cognitive skills.

Whereas cognitive skills tend to be the academic abilities most often associated with test-taking, doing well in school requires a combination of cognitive and noncognitive skills. It’s not just “do I know the order of operations, and can I apply it to an algebra problem?” but “am I motivated to do well in school?”, “do I have positive relationships with my teachers and peers?”, and “am I able to manage due dates?”

To measure noncognitive skills, researchers often employ sets of survey questions like the Behavior Problems Index (BPI) and the Positive Behavior Scale (PBS).
BPI asks caregivers a series of questions about the child in question and has two subscales, externalizing and internalizing behavior:

  • Externalizing behavior includes questions about difficulty concentrating, disobedience, and impulsiveness.
  • Internalizing behavior includes questions about being fearful or anxious, easily confused, or sad and depressed.

PBS is also a caregiver-based measure and asks about curiosity, doing neat work, and getting along well with other children.

For consistency, I reverse code the externalizing and internalizing behavior scales such that all measures correspond to higher scores indicating higher noncognitive skills. Similarly, to account for different scales, scores are standardized. I take advantage of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which has BPI and PBS measures. It also follows individuals over time, allowing for analyses that link childhood and adulthood.

Higher noncognitive skills are associated with higher educational attainment

Students who score better on measures of externalizing, internalizing, and positive behavior as children tend to have higher educational attainment as adults. This relationship seems to matter on the margin of attending college and completing a four-year degree.

However, it appears that externalizing behavior is more predictive than either internalizing or positive behaviors. Relative to high school graduates, college graduates scored about 0.64 of a standard deviation (SD) better on childhood measures of externalizing behavior, 0.37 SD better on childhood measures of internalizing behavior, and 0.34 SD better on childhood measures of positive behavior.

Figure 1

Boys have weaker noncognitive skills, especially at younger ages

Given the above, are there gender gaps in childhood noncognitive skill development? Overall, boys tend to score worse on externalizing behavior and positive behavior, while there is little difference in internalizing behavior. Other work confirms that boys tend to exhibit more externalizing behavior and, additionally, shows boys are behind girls in measures of approaches to learning and personal skills, on average. These gaps also vary by age. Below, I show gender gaps in externalizing and positive behavior across different age groups: 3–5, 6–8, 9–11, 12–14, and 15–17.

Figure 2

While there is no gender difference in externalizing behavior among 3-to-5-year-olds, gaps appear in elementary school and then disappear in middle and high school. Among 6-to-8-year-olds, boys score about 0.35 SD worse than girls on average, and this gap shrinks to about 0.25 SD among children 9–11. By ages 12–14 and beyond, the difference between boys and girls is essentially zero. For context, children born to unmarried mothers score about 0.37 SD worse on externalizing behavior than those born to married mothers.

Positive behavior displays a somewhat different pattern: gaps emerge in elementary school but are more persistent in middle and high school. Again, there is no observable gender gap from ages three to five. Then, boys tend to score worse from ages six to eight (0.20 SD), and even more so from ages 9 to 11 (0.28 SD). Rather than dissipate in middle school, this gap holds steady at about 0.29 SD and then shrinks to 0.20 SD for 15-to-17-year-olds.

Overall, gender gaps in noncognitive skills appear to be concentrated in elementary school with some persistence in middle and high school depending on the measure.

More research is needed

While the gender gap in noncognitive skills is well established, more research is needed to uncover the most promising policy solutions. The fact that these gaps emerge in elementary school points to early childhood and the early grades as important periods for further research and potential intervention. Potential approaches include early childhood education, greater exposure to male teachers, support for disadvantaged families, or later school starting ages for boys, though the evidence for any one approach remains mixed and incomplete. Part of the challenge is that studies need a credible research design, proxies for noncognitive skills in childhood, adult education and labor market outcomes, and enough statistical power to distinguish gender-specific effects. Many studies certainly have a subset of these criteria, and connections can be drawn across settings, but the most compelling evidence would explicitly test the through line from childhood noncognitive skills to later life outcomes with a focus on gender differences. In short, more work is needed to better understand how best to address the gap in noncognitive skills between boys and girls.

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