Gendered Investments: Parental Educational Investments in Japanese Families

Kristen Schultz Lee, Pennsylvania State University

This research challenges existing exchange-based models of educational investment and proposes an alternative model of investment in Japanese families based on parental gender attitudes. Through an analysis of survey data from the National Family Research 1998 Survey, exchange-based models of educational investment arguing that boys drain resources away from their sisters are shown to be inadequate. Parents with conservative gender attitudes are found, overall, to invest less in their daughters than parents with more liberal attitudes. A similar relationship is not found for boys, however, nor are indicators of exchange motives found to play a significant role in the investment process. In families with conservative gender attitudes, girls with brothers are found to receive larger educational investments than girls without brothers. Cohort differences in gender attitudes are explored, exchange-based theories of investment are challenged, and the parental gender attitudes underlying investments, revealed.