Full Citation

Title: Gendered Employment Trends and the Female College Boom

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2014

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2367486

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: We ask whether shifting male and female employment patterns can help to explain why the US college boom between 1981 and 2005 was dominated by women. We make three contributions. First, we show that while a massive feminization of high-wage, high-skill occupations plausibly contributed to the female college boom, general, structural movements of labor (undifferentiated by gender) from industrial work into education-intensive services should have encouraged male rather than female college attendance. Previous work has suggested that both types of employment shifts would have contributed to the female college boom. Second, we show that women’s occupational upgrading was too large and ubiquitous to be explained by their growing educational advantage. This is consistent with a causal connection running from gendered employment trends to a female college boom. Third, we show that gender specializations in many occupations deepened, with college educated women gravitating towards jobs offering institutionally protected wages.

Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280570656

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Mehta, Aashish; Koppera, Vedant

Publisher: University of California-Santa Barbara

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: