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. Over time, Black women’s educational attainment has increased substantially, and high-achieving Black women, in particular, have become uniquely likely to progress beyond the BA. But while high-achieving Black women have made many advances in higher education, they also have become more likely than similarly high-achieving White men, White women, and Black men to have zero or negative wealth at the household level, and to accrue student debt for themselves and for their children. Our findings demonstrate that the costs of expanded access to credit for higher education have not been borne equally across race, gender, and achievement, and that these patterns have multigenerational financial consequences for college attendees and their families.