The Gender Gap in Educational Attainment Among Household Heads

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released new data on families and living arrangements of the U.S. population. The statistics show that in 2020 there were more than 83 million family households in the United States. Of these, there were 62 million households headed by a married couple. There were 6.5 million households headed by a single man and nearly 15 million households headed by a single woman.

When the data is broken down by education we find that nearly 44 percent of married-couple families had a parent that had earned a bachelor’s degree. For households headed by a single man, 22.7 percent of the householders were college graduates. For households headed by a single woman, 25.1 percent of the householders were college educated.

When we break the data down further by age of householder, we find that for households headed by a single man under the age of 45, 19 percent of the householders had earned a bachelor’s degree. For single women householders under the age of 45, 22.2 percent were college educated.

Some 12.5 percent of households led by a single man under the age of 45 had a householder that had not completed high school. For single women in this age group, 11.1 percent of householders had not completed high school.