Race, Gender, and Parental College Savings: Assessing Economic and Academic Factors

This article assesses the relationships between race, gender, and parental college savings. Some prior studies have investigated race differences in parental college savings, yet none have taken an intersectional approach, and most of these studies were conducted with cohorts of students who predate key demographic changes among U.S. college goers (e.g., the reversal of the gender gap in college completion). Drawing on theories of parental investment and data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), we show that both race and gender are associated with whether parents save for college, as well as how much they save. Both black boys and black girls experience savings disadvantages relative to their white peers. However, black girls experience particularly striking disparities: Black girls with the strongest academic credentials receive savings equivalent to black girls with the weakest academic credentials. Results suggest this is due, at least in part, to the fact that high-achieving black girls tend to come from families that are much less well-off than high achievers in other race-gender groups. As a result, parents of black girls frequently rely on funding sources other than their own earnings or savings to pay for their children’s college. These funding sources include private loans that may pose financial challenges for black girls and their families across generations, thus deepening inequalities along the lines of gender, race, and class. These findings demonstrate the power of taking an intersectional approach to the study of higher education in general and college funding in particular.