Imagine your life at 25: gender conformity and later-life outcomes

Using thousands of essays written by 11-year-olds in 1969, we construct an index measuring girls’ conformity to gender norms. We link this index to outcomes over the life-cycle. Conditional on age-11 covariates, a one standard deviation increase in our index predicts a 3.4% decline in lifetime earnings, due to lower wages and fewer hours worked. Education, occupation and family formation mediate half of this decline. Holding skills constant, girls who conform less to gender norms live in regions with higher female employment and university attendance, highlighting the role of the environment in which girls grow up.