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Educational Inequality Between Brothers and Sisters in the United States
Article Number: SIS298137AI201222
20th December, 2022
Author(s):
Gregory M. Eirich
Abstract:
For most of the 20th century, American women had, on average, lower educational attainment
than men. Researchers often theorize that differential treatment by parents based on children’s
genders played a role in this result, but they rarely examine directly whether siblings from the
same family were unequally affected. This paper redresses this lacuna by asking two
questions: (1) Is the gender gap in educational attainment in the population at large as evident
within families? (2) Does parental socioeconomic status (SES) attenuate or exacerbate
education differences between sons and daughters? Using the Study of American Families,
fixed effects regressions initially suggest that families did favor sons over daughters, but
upon closer examination, only high SES families generated higher-educated sons than
daughters; low SES families produced equally-educated sons and daughters. These results are
contrary to the predictions of gender egalitarianism theory. Additionally, this paper uncovers
that if a father had more education than his wife, their son was more likely to surpass his
sister educationally, net of family SES; this highlights the reproduction of gendered relations
of educational advantage across generations.