A Supply-Demand Framework for Understanding the U.S. Gender Gap in Education
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Francisco Parro
Abstract
The progress made by American women in higher education has been impressive. In 1970 a higher fraction of men than women completed a college education. During the following four decades, the gender gap in education not only decreased but became negative. However, this was not always so. The pre-1970 period (1950-1970) was characterized by an opposite trend: the gender gap strongly increased. This paper develops a model to quantify, within a unified framework, the relative importance of supply and demand forces on the rise and fall of the U.S. gender gap in education. Specifically, I build and calibrate an assignment model for the U.S. economy with endogenous human capital accumulation of women and men, where three different sources of education gains exist: (1) supply shifts, (2) a within-sector skill-biased technical change (SBTC), and (3) the creation of new high-skill services/sectors. I find that asymmetrical supply shifts by gender were the major force behind, first, the increase in the gender gap during the pre-1970 period and, second, the decrease in the gap during the post-1970 period. The empirical results show positive supply shifts for men but not for women during the pre-1970 period, and negative supply shifts for men together with no changes in supply for women during the post-1970 period. I discuss some explanations for the dissimilar behavior of women's and men's supply during both periods.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Advances Article
- Life Cycle Dynamics of Income Uncertainty and Consumption
- Immigration, Fiscal Policy, and Welfare in an Aging Population
- Contributions Article
- Who Gets the Credit? And Does It Matter? Household vs. Firm Lending Across Countries
- How Much Did the 2009 Australian Fiscal Stimulus Boost Demand? Evidence from Household-Reported Spending Effects
- Economic Growth and Political Survival
- Exchange Rate Uncertainty and Trade
- Monetary and Macroprudential Policy Rules in a Model with House Price Booms
- A Unified Framework for Using Micro-Data to Compare Dynamic Time-Dependent Price-Setting Models
- Government Policy Response to War-Expenditure Shocks
- Poverty Traps and Growth in a Model of Endogenous Time Preference
- Where Has All the Money Gone? Foreign Aid and the Composition of Government Spending
- Great Spending Crashes
- Capital Utilization and the Amplification Mechanism
- Topics Article
- Unemployment Expectations and the Business Cycle
- Sector-Specific Capital, Labor Market Distortions and Cross-Country Income Differences: A Two-Sector General Equilibrium Approach
- A Dynamic Theory of Competence, Loyalty and Stability in Dictatorships
- Coordination Failure in Investment, Economic Growth, and Volatility
- Openness, Imported Commodities and the Sacrifice Ratio
- Consumption, Leisure and Borrowing Constraints
- A Credibility Proxy: Tracking US Monetary Developments
- Estimating Information Rigidity Using Firms' Survey Data
- Has the Fed Reacted Asymmetrically to Stock Prices?
- News Shocks, Productivity and the U.S. Investment Boom-Bust Cycle
- A Supply-Demand Framework for Understanding the U.S. Gender Gap in Education
- Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in Bolivia during the Market Liberalization Period
- Government Debt Dynamics Under Discretion
- The Global Transmission of Government Debt
- Is Discretionary Fiscal Policy in Japan Effective?
- The Laffer Curve in a Frictional Labor Market
- Nonexponential Discounting: A Direct Test And Perhaps A New Puzzle
- International Transmission of Medium-Term Technology Cycles: Evidence from Spain as a Recipient Country
- Phases of Economic Development: Do Initial Endowments Matter?
