Sex differences in educational attainment

At the end of the 90s, Lynn knew that men have higher abilities and SAT scores. However, why then did females have higher grades in college? Analysing national databases and relevant literature, he concluded that the reason is in higher work ethics of females.Lynn has analysed science achievement in large international studies. Males were better than females, especially 17–18 year olds, which corresponds to the higher abilities of males. However, the male advantage decreased over time and females performed as well as males by about 2008.The next object of interest for Lynn was the variance in the test results for males and females. Seven international tests revealed that on average the variance for males was 12% larger than that for females. This is one explanation for the fact that there are more men in science than women.Several lines of future research emerge from Lynn’s studies. The decrease in the male advantage in science tests leads to the hypothesis that there should be different Flynn effects for boys and girls. While the causes of sex differences may be different at the individual and country level, multilevel analysis is a useful tool of further research.

► In international studies, males achieved higher scores than females in science tests.
► In the studies, females were better than males in reading achievement.
► The variance in the scores for males was 12% larger than that for females.
► Sex differences correlated with the Index of Democracy and other variables.