The Economic Context of Higher Education Expansion: Race, Gender, and Household Finances Across Cohorts and Generations.

This article assesses how the economic context of higher education expansion since the mid-20th century has shaped families' financial lives-in terms of income and wealth/debt-as well as how these trends have differed for Black and White women and men. We use data from the NLSY-79 (comprising trailing-edge Baby Boomers) and NLSY-97 (comprising early Millennials) to show how academically similar students in these two cohorts fared in terms of educational attainment, household income, household wealth, and total student debt accrued by age 35. While we discuss findings across race-gender groups, our results call attention to the education-related economic disadvantages faced by Black women that have accelerated across cohorts.

Higher education and high-wage gender inequality.

Over the past 60 years, we have witnessed a relocation of gender wage inequality. Whereas the largest wage gaps were once concentrated among lower-paid, lower-educated workers, today these wage gaps sit among the highest-paid, highly-educated workers. Given this reordering of gender wage inequality and the centrality of college graduates to total inequality trends, in this article, we assess the contribution of higher education mechanisms to top-end gender inequality.

First-Generation Students, College Majors, and Gendered Pathways.

Emerging literatures have highlighted the social- and resource-related inequalities among first-generation college students. Less attention has been devoted to the curricular pathways (i.e.

Shadow education, pandemic style: Social class, race, and supplemental education during Covid-19.

Research on shadow education-i.e., one-on-one or group learning intended to supplement children's experiences in school-has documented persistent social class and racial/ethnic inequalities.

Race, Gender, Higher Education, and Socioeconomic Attainment: Evidence from Baby Boomers at Midlife.

This article investigates White, Black, and Hispanic men's and women's access and midlife labor market returns to college quality. To do so, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 Cohort (NLSY-79), merged with college quality information from the Barron's Admissions Competitiveness Index. Although prior research has investigated similar dynamics in access and returns to higher education, this work typically excludes Hispanics and does not assess enrollments at community colleges and other less competitive colleges where Black and Hispanic enrollments tend to cluster.