Educational and Labor Market Outcomes of Single-sex High School Graduates

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between graduation from single-sex high schools and individual-level educational and labor market outcomes using individual data from the “Internet Survey on Intergenerational Education and Training, and Cognitive and Non-cognitive Abilities” conducted in 2019 by the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. First, we estimated differences in educational and labor market outcomes for single-sex school graduates compared to co-educational graduates using OLS, controlling for a comprehensive set of variables on socio-economic background, grades, and educational resources of schools in the prefecture of residence during their middle school years, and lessons and experiences during their elementary school years, as well as a private high school dummy and the level of academic achievement (college enrollment rate) of high school peers. The results showed that the probability of graduation from a prestigious university and wages were higher for males from boys' schools, while for females, wages were lower for those who graduated from girls' schools. The findings were more pronounced in the high quintile of the wage distribution for males and in the low quintile for females. However, when the percentage of single-sex high schools in the prefecture of residence at age 15 was used as an instrumental variable in the estimation, it was shown that education in girls' schools did not cause wage reductions. This suggests that at the time when the subjects of the analysis (in their late 20s to 50s at the time of the survey) were educated in high school, girls or their families, who did not value labor market outcomes in terms of wages, selected to go to girls' schools. It should be noted, though, that such a preference is not observed for women in the higher quintiles of the wage distribution.