Family Determinants of the Changing Gender Gap in Educational Attainment: A Comparison of the U.S. and Germany

Abstract

Trends in the gender gap in college completion for the U.S. and Germany show that the gender gap has closed in Germany as it has in the U.S., but, unlike the U.S., women have not yet achieved inequality in rates of tertiary degree attainment, let alone overtaken men. A central reason for this difference is the fact that the relationship between parental education and gender-specific rates of tertiary degrees has not changed over time in Germany as it has in the U.S. The lack of change in Germany is consistent with both environmental and family resource explanations for the reversal in the U.S., and provides additional support for resource and incentive-based theories of the female-favorable trends in rates of higher education completion in much of the industrialized world.