서강대학교

초록 (요약문)

This dissertation is a collection of empirical studies on non-academic outcomes of single-sex schooling. Essay 1 investigates the effects of single-sex schooling on students’ mental health outcomes, focusing on depression, suicide-related behaviors (suicidal ideation and suicide attempts), and the various causes of stress. We employ a national-level large-scale dataset of middle school students in South Korea, conducted from 2005 to 2018. We find that single-sex schooling has a significant positive effect on adolescent depression, especially in girls. Our findings regarding the causes of stress show that single-sex schooling reduces the stress associated with peer relationships, particularly for girls. These findings imply that the non-cognitive benefits of single-sex education may be stronger than previously thought and a more comprehensive discussion on the formation of schools is required. Essay 2 reveals that adolescents’ weight-related health risks can depend on single-sex (coed) school attendance. Our analyses of a sample of over 478,000 middle school students from 2005 to 2019 in South Korea indicate that while single-sex school attendance may increase the risk of being overweight, it may also decrease the risk of being underweight compared to coeducational school attendance. We further confirmed that non-overweight girls in single-sex schools are less likely to engage in weight-loss efforts or participate in unhealthy weight-loss methods such as having fewer meals and monotrophic diet. These findings imply that coeducational and single-sex schools should adopt different approaches to improving their students’ weight-related health conditions. Essay 3 examines the effects of single-sex schooling on three non-cognitive outcomes (items of depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and school aspirations) by using a national longitudinal data from South Korea. Analysis using a difference-in-differences approach reveals that single-sex school attendance improves non-cognitive outcomes, especially for girls, but the results are mixed for boys. These findings are robust across varying definitions of treatment and control groups utilizing single-gender and mixed-gender classes in coeducational schools. While coeducational schooling is attracting greater attention in late developed countries such as South Korea, this study implies that it might have unintended adverse effects on students’ non-cognitive development.