Explaining the gender difference in college attendance

ABSTRACT

This paper explains why college attendance increased faster for women than for men in the United States by examining the effect of expected lifetime work hours on college attendance. Using U.S. census data 1950–2000 and the American Community Survey 2010, we show that expected lifetime work hours has a significant effect on college attendance for both men and women, with a larger effect for women than for men. A larger gender difference in expected lifetime work hours leads to a larger gender difference in college attendance.

KEYWORDS:

• Expected lifetime labour force participation
• college attendance
• gender difference

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J24
• J21

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Annual work hours is computed by multiplying the number of weeks a person worked last year, and the number of hours the person usually worked per week during the previous year. The calculation of $\overline{\mathit{HRS}}$ includes people who have 0 hours of work.