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Title: Non-College Occupations and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2020
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Abstract: Women used to lag behind but now exceed men in college enrollment. This paper shows that examining occupations which require only a high school degree (“non-college” occupations) can help resolve two puzzles related to this phenomenon. First, why do women attend college at greater rates than men today, when men work more and earn more than women? I document that non-college occupations for men are both more plentiful and higher paying than those for women. Next, I link the occupational inequality in the non-college labor market to the gap in college enrollment, by employing two empirical exercises to show that non-college jobs dramatically affect college-going decisions. Using employment changes in the oil and gas industry, I demonstrate that increases in men’s non-college job opportunities lead male high school graduates to forego college enrollment. Using the automation of the office, I demonstrate that declines in the non-college employment opportunities of women lead female college enrollment to grow over time. Thus, women’s lower non-college job prospects contribute to their higher college enrollment. This leads to the second puzzle: why did women initially attend college at lower rates than men, when women have always had worse non-college job prospects than men? I develop a theoretical model to demonstrate that both the importance and availability of non-college occupations for women contributed to women’s initially low enrollment, as well as to the growth in female enrollment over time, such that women eventually overtook men in college-going.
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Authors: Chuan, Amanda
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS
Topics: Education, Gender
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