Structure of Disk Dominated Galaxies: II. Color Gradients and Stellar Population Models

(Abridged) We investigate optical and near-IR color gradients in a sample of 172 low-inclination galaxies spanning Hubble types S0--Irr. The colors are compared to stellar population synthesis models from which luminosity-weighted average ages and metallicities are determined. We explore the effects of different underlying star formation histories and additional bursts of star formation. Our results are robust in a relative sense under the assumption that our galaxies shared a similar underlying star formation history and that no bursts involving more than ~10% of the galaxy mass have occurred in the past 1-2 Gyr. We find strong correlations in age and metallicity with Hubble-type, rotational velocity, total magnitude, and central surface brightness in the sense that earlier-type, faster rotating, more luminous, and higher surface brightness galaxies are older and more metal-rich, suggesting an early and more rapid star formation history for these galaxies. The increasing trends with rotational velocity and total magnitude level off for V_rot > 120 km/s and M_K < -23 mag respectively. This effect is stronger for metallicity (than age) which could reflect a threshold potential above which all metals are retained and thus metallicity saturates at the yield. Trends in gradients with galaxy parameters are compared with model predictions: these trends do not agree with predictions of semi-analytic models of hierarchical galaxy formation, possibly due to the effect of bar-induced radial flows. The observed trends are in agreement with chemo-spectrophotometric models of spiral galaxy evolution based on CDM-motivated scaling laws but none of the hierarchical merging characteristics, implying a strong dependence of the star formation history of spiral galaxies on the galaxy potential and halo spin parameter.