Do men and women have different risk tolerances?

Across cultures and domains, men on average report and display more risk tolerance than women, with a gap of around 0.2 to 0.4 standard deviations. In the Global Preferences Survey covering 76 countries, women were less risk-tolerant in nearly every country. The gap is larger for physical and financial risk than for social risk, and it shrinks when wealth and knowledge are held equal.

Source: Falk et al. (2018), Quarterly Journal of Economics; Croson & Gneezy (2009), Journal of Economic Literature