Role Models, the Formation of Beliefs, and Girls’ Math Ability: Evidence from Random Assignment of Students in Chinese Middle Schools

This paper studies the power of role models in changing beliefs, behavior, and outcomes for children who are struggling in school and who face negative stereotypes. We exploit random assignment of Chinese middle school students to classrooms to estimate how being assigned a female math teacher affects low performing girls. In our data, there is widespread belief that men are more able to learn mathematics than women. We find that teacher-student gender match improves math test scores by 0.45 SD for low performing girls, increases their beliefs in the ability of women to learn mathematics, reduces their perception of the difficulty of learning math, and increases their investment in math-related human capital. These results are consistent with the main predictions of a model of aspirations and aspirations failure. They also provide direct empirical evidence for a specific mechanism, the power of role models in shaping beliefs, driving the common finding that a same-gendered teacher improves girls’ performance. ⇤Eble: Teachers College, Columbia University. Email: [email protected] Hu: School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing [email protected]. The authors are grateful to John Friedman, Asim Khwaja, and Ilyana Kuziemko for generous feedback.