Despite the substantial evidence indicating the existence of the sex gap in risk-taking and its importance in explaining sex differences in outcomes, particularly within the labour market, we still don’t really know why this gap exists.
In my latest article, focusing on the psychological underpinnings of risk, I attempted to address this important question. The starting point for pretty much all formal models of risky decision portugal rcs data making is that people stock market, for instance, weigh up the probability of losing that investment—if the markets should tumble—alongside a valuation of how painful that loss would feel. If women focus more on the possibility of losing that investment and anticipate experiencing more pain from these potential losses, then they will naturally evaluate a given gamble as being riskier.
To shed light on this simple idea, I used data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which follows the same representative sample of individuals over nearly two decades. Using the first 17 annual waves of the BHPS I extracted for each individual their sensitivity to losses as well as their tendency toward financial optimism.