Gendered Contexts? The Effect of Neighbourhood Socio-Economic Deprivation on Girls' and Boys' Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Development

Does socio-economic deprivation of adolescents' residential neighbourhoods affect their cognitive and non-cognitive development? Leveraging data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) in the UK, this study investigates this question focusing on gender differences. By exploiting the quasi-exogenous social housing allocation procedures in the UK, I aim to limit issues related to the endogeneity of neighbourhood selection. Results show that living in more deprived areas has overall a negative effect on cognitive and non-cognitive development. However, neighbourhood deprivation negatively affects girls', as compared to boys', cognitive skills, academic motivation and employability skills, while no significant gender difference is detected for problem behaviour. On the one hand, these findings highlight the importance of taking gender into account in neighbourhood studies and, on the other hand, they suggest that the availability of support within the local area and the quality of institutions should be considered as relevant theoretical mechanisms to understand the role of neighbourhoods on different spheres of adolescent development.