By Jillian Berman
For the first time ever, American women are more likely than American men to have a college degree.
In 2014, 30.2% of women had bachelor’s degrees, compared with 29.9% of men, according to the Census Bureau. The agency started collecting data on college attainment in 1940, and last year marked the first time women outpaced men in obtaining degrees.
Young women have been more likely than their male counterparts to attend college for the past 20 years or so, said Heidi Hartmann, the president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. But the country reached a tipping point where the share of women attending college of all ages outnumber the share of men attending college overall because there are now more young women with college degrees than older women without them, Hartmann said.