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Title: Accounting for the Gender Gap in College Attainment
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Ge, Suqin
Yang, Fang
Accounting for the Gender Gap in College Attainment
Working Paper, Department of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, February 2009
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Keyword(s): College Education; Earnings; Educational Attainment; Gender; Gender Differences; Parental Influences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

One striking phenomenon in the U.S. labor market is the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment. Females have outnumbered males in college attainment since 1987. We develop a discrete choice model of college entry decisions to study the effects of changes in relative earnings, changes in parental education, and changes in the marriage market on time series observations of college attainment by gender. We find that the increase in the relative earnings between college and high school individuals and the increasing parental education have important effects on the increase in college attainment for both genders but cannot explain the reversal of the gender gap. Declining marriage rates decrease returns to college for females less than those for males, and thus is crucial in explaining the reversal of the gender gap in college attainment.
Bibliography Citation
Ge, Suqin and Fang Yang. "Accounting for the Gender Gap in College Attainment." Working Paper, Department of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, February 2009.