Family structure and the gender gap in ADHD

We document the large, excess male-female gap in ADHD diagnosis and treatment rates for non-traditional families. Pre-teen boys in traditional families are 2.9 percentage points more likely to have been medicated for ADHD in the past two years than girls in traditional families, while the same gap for non-traditional families is 5.4 percentage points. We also document a similar pattern of boys in non-traditional families for ADHD-related outcomes such as attention span, learning disability, emotional difficulties and unhappiness. Examining alternative pathways to family structure, we rule out typical forms of disadvantage but find that school policies may interact with family structure to increase the male ADHD diagnosis and medication gap. We also highlight an important limitation of the family fixed effects models often used in family structure research, showing that the largest effects are for only children.