Cross-Cohort Changes in College Persistence Gaps by Parental Income and College Type

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Abstract

Gaps by parental income in college graduation rates are a major source of inequality of opportunity in the United States, yet little is known about how changes in the higher education system itself have shaped these disparities among college-goers over time. Using NLSY79 and 97 data linked to IPEDS information on institutional characteristics, this paper examines how shifts in student demographics, pre-college achievement, college types, and college resources contributed to cross-cohort changes in baccalaureate degree completion among students born 1957–64 and 1980–84. I use a sequential Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to isolate the portions of change attributable to each factor. Results show that the overall parental-income gap in graduation rates slightly decreased between cohorts, but this small change masks substantial divergence across college types. Graduation gaps by parental income changed in opposite directions across sectors of the higher education system, narrowing at public colleges and widening at private ones. This divergence of trends can be partly explained by private universities' faster racial diversification among low-income students. Changes in sorting into college types reduced the overall gap, as low-income students in the later cohort were more likely to go to doctoral universities, which offer them better graduation rates.

Author

• David Arbelaez, Harvard University