Recently, we examined the metro area’s gender pay gap as well as gender differences in the labor force participation rate by age. Overall, we found the same old story but with new data: Women make less than men in pretty much all occupational categories, and we do see a decrease in female labor force participation rates as women hit prime parenting years. So now it’s time to turn our attention to another facet of the earnings story: attainment (or not) of higher education. Lifetime earnings for those with bachelor’s degrees far surpasses those with a high school diploma, and the gains are even greater for those with graduate degrees (caveat that might be obvious: the earnings benefits are greater for men than women at both educational levels).

When it comes to attaining bachelor’s degrees and above, women have a lot to brag about. The charts below show just how much degree attainment has increased since 1970. The first chart illustrates the bachelor’s+ attainment rates of women and men in the 10-county area. Here, we see that in 1970, the share of male bachelor’s+ degree holders in the 10-county was 17.7 percent, whereas the rate of female bachelor’s+ degree holders was 9.9%. Fast forward to 2019, and both groups have a lot to brag about: The 10-county men’s rate increased by 23.8 points to 41.5 percent, and the women’s rate increased by 32.6 points to 42.5 percent, besting men both in percentage point growth and overall rate. The decade with the largest growth rate in attainment was the 1980s.

The second chart shows the ratio of female to male higher ed degree holders — here, a value of 1 indicates there is one woman for every man with a bachelor’s or higher degree. It shows we came near parity in 2000, with .95 women for every male higher ed degree holder (or, to put it in a way that doesn’t indicate partial humans, there were 95 women for every 100 men who held higher ed degrees). Since then, we have surpassed parity, with 2010 seeing 106 women holding higher educational degrees for every 100 men who did, and 2019 seeing 116 women for every 100 men holding a bachelor’s or more.

The final chart answers the question: Could the increase in higher education degree holders be explained by population growth alone? The chart shows, by gender, the growth of higher educational degree holders compared to the growth in population overall (25+), such that a value of 1 would indicate that bachelor’s+ degree holders are increasing at the same rate as the population. Here we can see that the rate of degree holders has increased faster than the population at large for both men and women, but the acceleration is faster for women than men. Between 2010 and 2019, for instance, we saw an increase of two female higher ed degree holders per new female resident, whereas there was an increase of just 1.5 male degree holders for every new male resident.

When it comes to parity, the enormous increase in women’s higher education attainment is a success story worth celebrating. However, it also holds a paradoxical place in the issue of wage inequity, given that educational attainment typically is a predictor of both better labor force participation rates and wage outcomes. In our previous work, we’ve seen that women’s labor force participation rate currently shows a dropoff by age that happens much earlier than that of men’s, and that wage inequity is alive and well despite women’s comparatively higher rates of bachelor’s+ degrees.