ARE WOMEN MORE RISK-AVERSE THAN MEN?

This paper measures the gender difference in risk aversion using a sample that controls for biases in the level of education and finance knowledge. We survey 1,382 Finance and English professors from universities across the United States and compare their actual portfolio allocations to that of respondents in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Our findings suggest that when individuals have the same level of education irrespective of their knowledge of finance, women are no more risk averse than men. We also find that the gender-risk aversion relation is a function of age, income, wealth, marital status, race/ethnicity and the number of children under 18 in the household. 3 I