Non-College Occupations, Workplace Routinization, and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment
65 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2023 Last revised: 23 May 2023
Abstract
This paper explores how non-college occupations contributed to the gender gap in college enrollment, where women overtook men in college-going. Using instrumental variation from routinization, we show that the decline of routine-intensive occupations displaced the non-college occupations of women, raising female enrollment. Embedding this instrumental variation into a dynamic Roy model, we find that routinization decreased returns to the non-college occupations of women, increasing their college premium. In contrast, men's non-college occupations were less susceptible to routinization. Our model estimates that workplace routinization accounted for 44% of the growth in female enrollment during 1980-2000.
Keywords: gender, college enrollment, human capital, occupations, automation
JEL Classification: I23, I24, I26, J16, J24, J23
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