Trends in the Effects of Marriage on Women's School Enrollment: 1968-1999

Christine R. Schwartz, University of California at Los Angeles
Robert D. Mare, University of California at Los Angeles

This paper examines whether increasing gender parity in educational attainment in the U.S. has resulted in increasing gender parity in school enrollment after marriage. We address the following questions: (1) How have the effects of marriage on women's school enrollment changed over time? (2) Are women still less likely than men to attend school after marriage, or have these odds changed across time? (3) If these odds have changed, to what extent do trends in the age and educational distributions of married couples explain changes in wives' enrollment relative to their husbands'? We use data from the 1968-1999 October Current Population Survey (CPS) and logistic regression models to predict the probability of women's enrollment in school as a function of marital status, age, and completed education, and the odds of wives' enrollment relative to their husbands' as a function of both husbands' and wives' age and completed education.