Abstract In the analysis and design of steel–concrete composite girders of a bridge, deflections, stresses, and strengths are typically obtained from elementary beam bending theory by utilizing the effective flange width concept. Shear lag effects are accounted for indirectly, by replacing the actual slab width by an appropriate reduced “effective” width. Besides the exact numerical values that can be given by numerical analysis of a bridge, it is necessary that code provisions should provide simplified practical method of evaluation of effective flange width without significant loss of accuracy. So each code implements different ideas and approaches for specifying effective flange width. Comparing them highlights distinct philosophies underlying the various effective width code formulations, which is the main objective of this paper. In this paper, the effective flange width provisions in the US, Britain, Canada, Japan, and European Committee are presented and compared. Characteristics of each provision are briefly described and summarized. Numerical comparisons for simply-supported spans and negative moment regions of continuous spans follow. The paper concludes with a summary outlining the commonalities and main differences among all these provisions.