Abstract
In a recent paper on gender inequality in higher education Buchman and DiPrete (2006) assume that the decrease in the gender gap in college completion in the US can partly be explained by changes in the allocation of familial resources in favour of women. However, they do not test this hypothesis empirically. In this paper I examine the effects of sibling sex composition on the graduation of women in more detail by analysing data from the German Life History Study. I assume that resources are the key issue to explaining the effects of sibling configuration on educational attainment. Tertiary education is a good case for testing sex composition effects due to the unequal distribution of resources between and within families, because the direct costs and opportunity costs of higher education are relatively high compared to those of earlier educational decisions. Accordingly, I expect that working class daughters are most likely to be disadvantaged if they are raised with brothers. The empirical results show that in fact, not the presence of a brother as such hinders educational attainment of sisters, but older brothers have a negative influence on their sisters chances of graduation. In accordance to the hypothesis, this effect is stronger for university graduation than for graduation at Fachhochschule. For social class differences in sibling effects it turns out that working class daughters are particularly less likely to graduate compared to service class daughters if there are older brothers in the family.
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Notes
Whereas the Abitur provides eligibility for all university courses, the Fach-Abitur or Fachhochschulreife provides access only to the Fachhochschulen.
This has changed recently in the course of the Bologna Process with the introduction of the Bachelor/Master system, which has led to a convergence of the two tiers of higher education in terms of course length. Besides, the Fachhochschulen are also trying to gain equal footing with universities in other respects, e.g. by naming themselves “university of applied sciences” or by demanding the right to confer PhD degrees, which had formerly been the exclusive privilege of universities.
Even the realisation of an educational decision in later life that might appear to be the adult student’s own choice still often requires parental resources (Hillmert and Jacob 2003).
There are several other theories why siblings influence each other’s educational attainment, mostly referring to the number of siblings. For example, the so-called confluence model (Zanjonc and Markus 1975) assumes that in families with several children or with children spaced closely in age to one another, these children influence each other by providing a less favourable intellectual environment than that in families with fewer children. In the latter case the parents have a greater influence on the child’s cognitive development.
The Becker-Tomes model mainly looks at labour market returns, although education may also matter with respect to the marriage market and other social contexts. However, it is not discussed here whether in the marriage market men’s education pays off better than women’s does.
Another strand of literature uses more psychological explanations for the impact of siblings' sex composition on an individual’s educational attainment. It discusses whether the share of brothers, resp. sisters, in a family affects same- and opposite-sex siblings differently. The sex minority hypothesis of Rosenberg (1965) and its counterpart, the reversed sex minority hypothesis (cf. Conley 2000), assume positive, resp. negative, influences upon an individual who is a minority with respect to his/her sibling constellation. Positive effects are assumed when the minority sex enjoys a particular status that is favourable for educational attainment, e.g. due to greater parental attention. Negative influences upon the minority would occur if there are socialization conflicts for the gender minority or when the minority receives less gender-specific attention to his/her needs than he/she would in a family in which he/she is part of the dominant household culture. These hypotheses will not be tested in the paper at hand, as the main assumption is that the distinctive features of participation in higher education are its high direct and indirect cost compared to previous educational decisions.
I cannot identify stepchildren, but have to treat all siblings as equal.
In the empirical analyses I will not address this selection problem statistically (e.g. Cameron and Heckman 1998). Therefore, in the interpretation one has to be aware that the characteristics of those who actually achieve the Abitur may be different from those of the ‘average’ incumbent of a social class, e.g., working-class daughters who made it this far in the educational system may be different from other working-class daughters, e.g. in terms of ability, motivation and career orientations. Given this selection on unobservables, if we still find differences between social classes even in this highly selected group of women with Abitur, social class makes a difference for participation in higher education even over and above previous selection.
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Jacob, M. Do brothers affect their sisters’ chances to graduate? An analysis of sibling sex composition effects on graduation from a university or a Fachhochschule in Germany. High Educ 61, 277–291 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9377-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9377-8