Gender differences in risk attitudes: Field experiments on the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi

We conduct experiments on two different risk tasks with subjects from two neighboring ethnic groups, the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi in China. Women are more risk averse than men at both tasks within both ethnic groups. However, the gender gap is smaller in the Mosuo. Regressions show that socio-economic factors such as family size, family head, education, age, and income also have significant effects on subject's risk choices. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.