Bachelors Without Bachelor's: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates

Abstract

Over the past half-century, U.S. four-year colleges have shifted from majority-male to majority-female. As college men have become increasingly scarce, college women have maintained stable marriage rates by marrying economically well-off non-college men. Meanwhile, economic outcomes for other non-college men have sharply declined, accompanied by a drop in marriage rates for non-college women. Both historical evidence and cross-area comparisons suggest that worsening male outcomes primarily undermine the marriage prospects of non-college women. The gap in marriage rates between college- and non-college women is more than 50% smaller in areas where men have the lowest rates of joblessness and incarceration.

Keywords: marriage, education, college, inequality, gender, assortative, sorting, homophily

JEL Classification: J12, J13, J16, I24