Volume 36, Number 4 (Fall) 2001
Reynolds, John, and Jennifer Pemberton. 2001. "Rising College Expectations Among Youth in the United States: A Comparison of 15 and 16 Year Olds in the 1979 and 1997 NLSY." Journal of Human Resources 36(4):703-726.
We examine the rise in college expectations among 15- and 16-year-olds in the 1979 and 1997 NLSY. Probit models estimate the effects of gender, race/ethnicity, family characteristics, and local economic conditions on the probability of expecting a college degree. Race/ethnic differences and the influences of family resources and county economic conditions declined between 1979 and 1997. In contrast, girls became more likely to expect a college degree than boys, and family structure grew in importance over time. Family resources and structure appear to shape expectations largely through differences in school peers, teacher quality and interest, and past academic performance.
John Reynolds is an assistant professor of sociology and Jennifer Pemberton is a PhD student in sociology at Florida State University. This research was supported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Joint Center for Poverty Research, and the Spencer Foundation. The authors thank the organizers of and participants in the Conference of Early Results from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in Washington, D.C., and members of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy at Florida State University, for their comments on an earlier version of this work. The data used in this article may be obtained from May 2002 through April 2005 from John Reynolds at the Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2270, email jreynold@coss.fsu.edu .
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X