TY  - JOUR
AU  - Goldin,Claudia
AU  - Katz,Lawrence F.
AU  - Kuziemko,Ilyana
TI  - The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12139
PY  - 2006
Y2  - April 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12139
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12139.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Claudia Goldin
National Bureau of Economic Research
1050 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/613-1200
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: cgoldin@harvard.edu

Lawrence F. Katz
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-5148
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu

Ilyana Kuziemko
361 Wallace Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-6917
Fax: 609/258-5974
E-Mail: kuziemko@princeton.edu
AB  - Women are currently the majority of U.S. college students and of those receiving a bachelor%u2019s degree, but were 39 percent of undergraduates in 1960. We use three longitudinal data sets of high school graduates in 1957, 1972, and 1992 to understand the narrowing of the gender gap in college and its reversal. From 1972 to 1992 high school girls narrowed the gap with boys in math and science course taking and in achievement test scores. These variables, which we term the proximate determinants, can account for 30 to 60 percent of the relative increase in women%u2019s college completion rate. Behind these changes were several others: the future work expectations of young women increased greatly between 1968 and 1979 and the age at first marriage for college graduate women rose by 2.5 years in the 1970s, allowing them to be more serious students. The reversal of the college gender gap, rather than just its elimination, was due in part to the persistence of behavioral and developmental differences between males and females.
ER  -