Cross-Era Gender Differences in Educational Attainment Among Second-Generation Immigrants

Abstract

Starting in the 1990s, the United States experienced a gender revolution in education whereby later born cohorts of women surpassed men in rates of higher education completion. However, little research has explored how gender differences in education for second-generation immigrants compare to the children of U.S.-born Whites over historical and contemporary time periods. Immigrants arrive with varying levels of socioeconomic status and may come from countries with paternalistic ideologies that reinforce traditional gender norms. However, immigrants also experience assimilation over time and may begin to mirror the U.S.-born in their educational outcomes by the second generation. While national trends show that women have surpassed men in years of education, we question whether immigrants will experience similar trends, or whether their outcomes will vary by national origin. We analyze newly obtainable linked census data collected from 1940 to the present, a timeline where linked data were previously unavailable, to test these ideas. These data offer insight into gendered trends in education by family background and socioeconomic status using a broader timeline than studies before. We find that while there is variation in the degree to which gender differences in education occur by ethnic origin, overall trends for immigrants are similar to those for U.S.-born Whites regardless of socioeconomic status in childhood. In the Industrial Era, men generally attained more years of schooling than women. However, there is greater gender equality and often a female advantage occurring for most groups in the post-Industrial Era. Educational trends for Blacks are an anomaly, whereby women have attained more years of schooling than men in both Eras.