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1 (November 17, 2004)

handle is hein.crs/crsuntaafiu0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code 95-1081 E Updated November 17, 2004 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Education Matters: Earnings by Educational Attainment Over Three Decades Linda Levine Specialist in Labor Economics Domestic Social Policy Division The amount of education that individuals accumulate has an important influence on their experience in the labor market. Workers with more years of education typically encounter less unemployment. Conversely, as educational attainment increases, earnings typically rise. These relationships have held up over time, and in some periods, have intensified. College graduates' earnings grew so much more rapidly than those of less educated workers during the 1980s, for example, that it prompted ongoing interest in the extent of wage inequality among U.S. workers. Workers with a bachelor's degree are much better off today, compared to less educated workers, than they were some three decades ago. As shown in Table 1, the average wage advantage of male college graduates over male high school graduates grew from about 50% in the latter half of the 1970s to at least 90% thus far in the current decade. The average premium paid to female college over female high school graduates similarly increased, going from about 40% to about 80% during the same period. Workers with the least education generally have experienced the slowest wage growth. This has been particularly true for men. Weakness in comparatively high-paid male-dominated industries in which many jobs typically require 12 or fewer years of schooling (e.g., manufacturing) likely explains some of the relatively meager wage gains among less educated men. Over the years, women's wages have increased to a much greater degree than men's wages at each educational level. Nonetheless, men who lack high school diplomas continue to earn slightly more than female high school graduates and slightly less than women who have some postsecondary education.2 These one-year earnings differences by education level are estimated to produce markedly wider disparities over an individual's working life. Among full-time year-round 1 For information on wage inequality see CRS Report RL31616, The Distribution of Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers in the United States, 1994-2002, by Gerald Mayer. 2 For information on the gender wage gap see CRS Report 98-273, The Gender Wage Gap and Pay Equity: Is Comparable Worth the Next Step?, by Linda Levine. Congressional Research Service + The Library of Congress

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