Cawley also found that weight does not have an impact on whether a woman will be employed or on which occupation she will be employed in. Cawley cautions against assuming that the wage differential is caused by discrimination. It could easily be explained by a drop in productivity caused by extra pounds. Reading and science scores showed little improvement or dropped during the past 30 years, while math scores have increased, the latest National Association of Educational Progress test results show. But younger students showed significant progress.
Results still differ by sex.
In reading, girls outperform boys in all three age groups, but in math the gap has disappeared, with girls now computing just as well as boys. The gap between minority scores and white scores narrowed in some instances and widened in others. The science gap between whites and Hispanics was unchanged for all three age groups. In reading, the gap between whites and blacks narrowed for all age groups, as did the gap between whites and Hispanics. But the racial gaps have been widening in the 1990s, even between students of similar backgrounds.