A new analysis published on Thursday found significant strides in educational attainment for Latinas in the U.S., along with disparities in income compared to Latinos and white male counterparts.
The University of California, Los Angeles’ Latino Policy and Politics Institute analyzed data from the 2021 American Community Survey and found that more Latinas are pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higher than ever before.
The number of Latina students pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higher rose from 1 million in 2000 to over 3.5 million in 2021, and in the same time frame, the percentage of degree-holding Latinas quadrupled from a meager 5% to 20%.
The analysis also uncovered that Latina women are more likely than Latino men to hold a bachelor’s degree, regardless of age group, country of origin, veteran status or English proficiency. Younger generations of Latinas are also more likely to pursue a higher education than older generations.
These conclusions are in line with what other researchers have found: For example, Latinos have seen the fastest growth in advanced degree attainment of any racial or ethnic group — primarily bolstered by Latinas.
These significant strides in Latinas’ educational attainment are complicated by the researchers’ other findings: crucially, that Latinas who have a bachelor’s degree or higher still earned lower wages on average compared to Latinos and non-Hispanic white men. Latinas earned on average $6 less per hour than similarly educated Latino men and $14 less per hour than similarly educated white men.
Additionally, the median Latina earned $26 per hour — lower than almost all other college-educated workers, no matter their race or sex.
Many factors can affect Latinas’ ability to access higher education, according to the UCLA LPPI researchers: “For Latinas, their educational attainment varies really greatly depending on their lived experience,” co-author and LPPI’s senior research analyst Misael Galdámez said.
Country of origin could play a part in how accessible higher education is to certain individuals. Latinas of South American descent were most likely to have completed at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas Latinas who hail from Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent were the least likely.
Geography within the U.S. also mattered, according to the report, with Latinas who live on the East Coast more likely to have completed a bachelor’s than Latinas on the West Coast.
Additionally, Latino veterans — regardless of gender — are more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees than nonveterans. Compared to nonveterans, Latina veterans were 15 percentage points more likely to have completed a bachelor’s or more, according to the report.
“Our hope at UCLA LPPI is that by understanding the nuances of their lived experiences, and how that impacts their likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree, then we can implement policy solutions empowering Latinas to improve their well being and quality of life,” Galdámez said.
