The black gender gap in educational attainment: historical trends and racial comparisons.

Abstract

It is often asserted that the gender gap in educational attainment is larger for blacks than whites, but historical trends comparing the black and white gender gap have received surprisingly little attention. Analysis of historical data from the U.S. census IPUMS samples shows that the gender gap in college completion has evolved differently for whites and blacks. Historically, the female advantage in educational attainment among blacks is linked to more favorable labor market opportunities and stronger incentives for employment for educated black women. Blacks, particularly black males, still lag far behind whites in their rates of college completion, but the striking educational gains of white women have caused the racial patterns of gender differences in college completion rates to grow more similar over time. While some have linked the disadvantaged position of black males to their high risk of incarceration, our estimates suggest that incarceration has a relatively small impact on the black gender gap and the racial gap in college completion rates for males in the United States.

Full text

Page 1

The Black Gender Gap in Educational Attainment:
Historical Trends and Racial Comparisons



Anne McDaniel
Ohio State University


Thomas A. DiPrete
Columbia University


Claudia Buchmann
Ohio State University


Uri Shwed
Columbia University



September 23, 2009











*The authors thank Robert Hauser for valuable comments on this paper. Earlier versions
of this paper were presented at the Population Association of American Annual Meeting
in Detroit, Michigan, the Population Center of the University of Texas, Austin, at the
Feminist Intervention colloquium series of the Institute for Research on Women and
Gender at Columbia University, and at the Russell Sage Foundation. Please direct
correspondence to Thomas A. DiPrete, Department of Sociology, Columbia University,
415 Fayerweather, Mail Code 2551, 1180 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027,
email:tad61@columbia.edu.

Page 2

2
The Black Gender Gap in Educational Attainment:
Historical Trends and Racial Comparisons

Abstract


It is often asserted that the gender gap in educational attainment is larger for blacks than whites,
but the historical trends that lead up to the current situation have received surprisingly little
attention. Analysis of historical data from the U.S. Census IPUMS Samples shows that the
gender gap in college completion has evolved differently for whites and blacks. Historically, the
black female advantage in educational attainment is linked to more favorable labor market
opportunities and stronger incentives for employment for educated black women. Males of both
races have tended to delay completion of a college degree, but this pattern is disappearing as the
striking educational gains of white women have caused the racial patterns of gender differences
in college completion rates to grow more similar over time. Blacks in general and black males in
particular continue to lag far behind whites in their rates of college completion. While some
have linked the disadvantaged position of black males to their high risk of incarceration, our
estimates suggest that incarceration has a relatively small impact on the black gender gap and the
racial gap in college completion rates for males in the U.S.

Page 3

3
The Black Gender Gap in Educational Attainment:
Historical Trends and Racial Comparisons
“We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges
and universities across America.”

In June 2007, then presidential candidate Barack Obama made this comment at an
NAACP Democratic Candidate Forum (Dobbs 2007). The statement was incorrect; in fact the
latest data available at the time indicated that two and a half times as many young black men
aged 18-24 were enrolled in college than in prison,1 but it is a prime example of the prevalent
perception of a crisis in the education of black males in America. These concerns are echoed in
a growing academic literature on black males’ education (Davis 2003; Lopez 2003; Ogbu 2003;
Mandara 2006; Reynolds and Burge 2008; Downey 2008), including a recent issue of the
American Behavioral Scientist devoted to African American male crisis in education (Jackson
and Moore 2008). A special report on “The Ominous Gender Gap in African American Higher
Education” in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported that “if we project into the
future the losses that black men have consistently logged over the past twenty years, by the year
2097, women will earn all the bachelor’s degrees awarded to blacks in the United States” (Cross
1999:6).
On the issue of black males’ education in the United States, sorting out hyperbole from
reality is difficult. It is hindered by the lack of knowledge of trends in college completion and
the educational milestones that contribute to college completion over time for different
race/gender groups. On the one hand, it is well known that black males trail black females on a
range of key educational outcomes including graduating from high school, enrolling in college

Page 4

4
and completing college. In any given year since 2000, among black college degree recipients, no
less than 66 percent are women (Snyder and Dillow 2009: Table 284). Such facts appropriately
spark concern about the educational progress of black males relative to other groups. But they
also raise important questions: How longstanding is the black female advantage in college
completion? Is it a recent phenomenon, as it is for whites, or have black women long outpaced
men in their receipt of college degrees? How has the size of gender gap in college completion
among blacks compared to that among whites over the last century? When we consider a
broader age range, say young adults in their 20s, does the picture change? Do black men take
longer to earn their degrees but catch up to black women as they age? How do patterns of delay
in college completion compare for blacks and whites, men and women?
The current study answers these questions by describing how black men’s and women’s
college completion evolved over the last 70 years and comparing these trends to those for whites.
Some prior research has examined race and gender differences in college enrollment over short
periods of recent history. Hauser (1993) analyzed rates of college entry by gender and race using
October CPS data from 1972 to 1988. Cohen and Nee (2000) examined enrollments by gender
and race from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s from the Digest of Education Statistics. In
contrast, this is the first study to use U.S. census data from 1940-2000 along with data through
2007 from the American Community Survey to assess long-term historical trends in gender gaps
in college completion for blacks and compare them to those for whites. Thus it illuminates racial
differences in the gender gap prior to the 1970s, when white women began the process of
overtaking white men in college completion, as well as in more recent decades. In addition, we
examine several of the forces that are likely shaping these trends. We compare college
completion rates for black and white women and men to varying incentives and resources to

Page 5

5
attend college and show how racial differences in the gender-specific incentives for higher
education are consistent with race specific trends in the gender gap in college completion over
the period when, due to racial segregated labor markets, black and white graduates had
differential access to opportunities for employment and high status occupations.
Then in order to attain a thorough understanding about how and when men fall behind
women in college completion and how the process has changed for different groups over time,
we examine historical trends in gender differences in the educational transitions that lead to a
college degree (i.e. enrolling in college) and age-delay in completing college. Little is known
about gender- or race-specific trends in delay that affect the age of college completion. Age-
specific rates of college completion provide insight into whether specific groups are delaying
college completion or not and whether they eventually catch-up by earning their degrees at later
ages. This is the first study to examine historical trends in delaying college enrollment and
completion; as such, it provides a more complete view of how these processes have changed over
time for different groups than prior research.

Finally, we consider the degree to which rising incarceration rates among black men may
have affected the gender gap in college completion among blacks. From the mid 1970s to today,
incarceration rates rose sharply and a disproportionate number of black men are in prison and jail
(Langan 1991; Pettit and Western 2004). To the best of our knowledge, no research estimates
the effect of black men's incarceration on the black gender gap in college completion. We use
the Current Population Survey coupled with data from the Surveys of Inmates in State and
Federal Correctional Facilities to illustrate the magnitude of the potential effect of incarceration.
Then we use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 along with