Siblings and gender differences in African-American college attendance

Differences in college enrollment growth rates for African-American men and women have resulted in a large gender gap in college attendance. This paper shows that, controlling for spurious correlation with unobserved variables, having more college-educated older siblings raises rather than lowers the likelihood of college attendance for African-Americans. Furthermore, over one-third of the gender gap is due to the greater influence of older college-educated brothers and sisters on women than on men. This finding has implications for explanations of sibling effects on schooling by gender, for policies to reduce race and gender differences in schooling, and for calculating benefits of programs that increase college enrollments. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.