Gender and Attitudinal Determinants of Teacher Knowledge About the Fed: Survey Findings

• In Event: Analyzing Survey Data in Education Research

Abstract

A 2017 survey of 770 high school teachers in the Federal Reserve’s twelfth district (comprised of nine Western states) reveals that only about 16 percent of male teachers and 9 percent of female teachers can correctly identify the Fed’s main objectives of price stability and full employment. In addition to knowledge about the Fed, our survey data allow us to control for sex and age of the teachers, their educational attainment and teaching experience, attitudes toward teaching economics and whether economics is a mandated subject for high school graduation in the state.We find significant gender differences in survey responses with men scoring higher on the Fed knowledge questions than women.

Authors

• Evgeniya Duzhak, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

• Jane Lopus

• K. Jody Hoff, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco