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Title: Gender, Debt, and Dropping Out of College
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Dwyer, Rachel E.
McCloud, Laura
Hodson, Randy
Gender, Debt, and Dropping Out of College
Presented: Denver CO, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2012
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Keyword(s): College Degree; College Education; Debt/Borrowing; Dropouts; Gender Differences; Student Loans / Student Aid

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Access to credit has become critical for many young Americans to complete a college education and embark on a successful career path. Young people thus increasingly face the trade-off of taking on debt to complete college or forgoing college and taking their chances in the labor market without a college degree. These trade-offs are significantly gendered by gender differences in college preparation and support, and by the different labor market opportunities women and men face that affect the value of a college degree and future difficulties they may face in repaying significant college debt. We examine these new realities by studying gender differences in the role of debt in the pivotal event of dropping out of college in the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find that women and men are both more likely to drop out of college when carrying high debt, but men drop out at lower levels of debt than women. We conclude by considering whether high levels of debt have become one of the mechanisms that sort women and men into different positions in the structure of social stratification.
Bibliography Citation
Dwyer, Rachel E., Laura McCloud and Randy Hodson. "Gender, Debt, and Dropping Out of College." Presented: Denver CO, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2012.