Higher Career Cost Can Actually Explain Why More Women Than Men Go to College

I construct a tractable investments-and-marriage model where college and career investments, income distribution, marriage matching and marriage surplus division are simultaneously determined in the unique equilibrium. Evidence supports the model's prediction about the rise in women's college enrollment due to labor-market, marriage-market and social changes. Most importantly, a new equilibrium marriage-market channel explains the reversed college gender gap: more women than men go to college despite their shorter reproductive length that tampers with career investment incentive, because marginal college-investing women's marriage-market returns to college are endogenously higher. Finally I question the commonly predicted continued widening of the college gender gap.