Teenage girls are egalitarian, and boys are generous

Abstract

This paper examines how the social preferences of 2,500 girls and boys change throughout adolescence. We observe that at early ages (12 years old, grade 7) girls are egalitarian, boys are generous, and the percentage of spiteful individuals is less than 10% (with equal presence of girls and boys). Across the adolescence (up to 16 years old) we observe two clear phenomena: girls continue being egalitarian while boys are generous – however boys transition from being strongly generous to weakly generous.