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How Much Is An Education Worth?

• There are undoubtedly numerous non-monetary benefits to a good education (both personal and social).  However, in purely monetary terms the answer has to be quite a bit. In 2016 the median income for men with professional degrees was $60,112 per year greater than that for men who never graduated high school. Men who finished their schooling after earning a BA made on average $30,098 per year more than men with only a high school diploma.
• It is also clear that if you want to maximize your income, you're better off being male than being female. At every step, men are paid more than women with equivalent educations. As you can see from the activity How Much Do They Make?, men dominate in virtually all job categories too. The Wage Gap Fact Sheet shows that this is also true across racial categories. On average, whites earn more than blacks, who earn more than Hispanics. Within each group, men on average earn more than women.

Announcements for previous years' data are available via the following links:

• On March 28, 2005, the Census Bureau announced its 2004 earnings data in this news release. 
• On March 15, 2007, the Census Bureau announced its 2006 earnings data in this news release.
• On January 10, 2008, the Census Bureau announced its 2007 educational attainment data in this news release.

Year-round, Full Time U.S. Male Workers 25 and over, 2016
number of workers: 56,284,000

Year-round, Full Time U.S. Female Workers 25 and over, 2016
number of workers: 44,731,000

Highest Education Attained	% of workers	Median Annual Income	Difference from previous step	Cumulative difference from 1st step
No HS diploma	4.93%	$21,996
High School graduate	22.03%	31,148	$9,152	$9,152
Some college or Associate degree (AA)	28.89%	35,776	4,628	13,780
Bachelor's degree (BA) and higher	44.15%	57,252	21,476	35,256
BA only	26.80%	51,688	15,912	29,692
advanced degree	17.35%	65,364	13,676	43,368

Women's Earnings versus Men's
Year-round, Full Time Workers 25 and over, 2016

Highest Education Attained	On average, men earned this much more than women in 2016	Women's earnings as a % of men's *
No HS diploma	$6,656	76.77%
High School graduate	8,840	77.89%
Some college or Associate degree (AA)	10,816	76.79%
Bachelor's degree (BA) and higher	18,876	75.20%
BA only	18,408	73.74%
advanced degree	23,400	73.64%

* If you drop the % sign, the contents of the third column in this table can be thought of as the amount women earned for every $100 earned by men.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average annual expenditures per household in the U.S. in 2015 was $55,978. That means that on average only men with a BA or advanced degree (21.84% of full time employed men), or women with an advanced degree (1.32% of full time employed women) could afford to head a household as a single earner. Most others would have to go into debt, or have one or more other household members work to make up the difference; or some combination of the two. This BLS report is available online at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also tracks the employment (and unemployment) status of the labor force. Here is its data as of January 2017.

You may find the most current version of this table at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

For additional information on education and earnings

Education Pays

This BLS chart shows the effects of educational attainment on income and unemployment.

Information Please Almanac's Salary Data

The table on this web page uses the Census Bureau's data to compare men's and women's income from 1990.

Christian Science Monitor story "Growing Cost of Skipping College" (published March 3, 1999)

This article reports on the struggle of those without college educations as they attempt to keep up in a technological economy. It is based in part on the newly published "The Forgotten Half Revisited".

A Marketwatch.com Special Report: Back to School (published April 22-26, 2002)

This series, published in 5 parts, explores the efforts of workers to gain additional education, in part to benefit from the additional pay that comes with it. Here are links to each of the articles. Access to them may require a free registration.

1. Heading back for grad school

2. Biggest bang for the buck

3. More women invest in grad school

4. Online Graduate Degrees

5. Financing A Graduate School Education

For additional information on "Wage Gaps"

The Wage Gap fact sheet from the National Committee on Pay Equity

The perceived meaning of a high school diploma

Public Agenda polled teachers, students, parents, employers and college professors asking whether they thought a high school diploma meant the recipient had "at least learned the basics". I found the results fascinating.  Sharing them with your students could lead to a very interesting discussion.

On June 21, 2006, Talk of the Nation broadcast a segment on the employability of High School grads (those who got a high school diploma, but pursued no further formal schooling). It should provide enlightening listening for those who believe that a high school diploma on its own is the key to success in the world of work.

If this worked well

• Try the Classroomtools.com activity How Much Do They Make?

• Have your students use any more recent statistics to update the tables above. What, if anything, has changed?

• Have your students use the more detailed data available to prepare tables similar to those above for specific racial groups (i.e. blacks, hispanics, and non-hispanic whites). You might then divide your class into smaller working groups, assigning each a racial group for which to prepare a set of tables. After all have completed their assignments, you could have each group present its results to the entire class. Once all groups have reported, you could go on to lead a class discussion where you compare and discuss what was found.

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original web posting: Friday, December 11, 1998
last modified: Saturday, March 11, 2017