We place a lot of faith in education to meet our needs both as individuals and as a society. Given all the time and money we invest, especially as students, we hope that the payoff will be worth it. One way to begin addressing that question for individuals is to check to see if there is a correlation between educational attainment and income level. The good news is that recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates a strong positive correlation: as educational level goes up, median income also rises.
My past posts (here and here) on the relationship between education and income routinely receive among the most visits of any posts I have. The new numbers in this post are for 2010 and were released in 2011. They come from the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (PINC-03, Table 28). Graphically, the new numbers look like this:
In addition, the Census Bureau released a report, Education and Synthetic Work-Life Earnings Estimates (pdf), in September, 2011 providing projected lifetime earnings for males and females by both educational attainment and race/ethnicity. This represents an effort to show the long-term consequences of such education differences. As the graph below demonstrates, the overall trend for all groups is that income goes up as educational attainment increases, though the nature of the benefit varies by both gender and race/ethnicity.
September 13, 2011 at 10:56 am
[...] [Update: There is a newer version of this post with updated data available here.] [...]
October 4, 2011 at 6:09 pm
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November 14, 2011 at 5:00 am
These figures look promising, as I’m a white male (age 20) who intends to get a bachelors at UC Berkley & MBA from Harvard.
However I disagree with the stats. The median means the middle, if I’m not mistaken, and if you look at the income distribution based on race, education, and religion, you’ll find that asian males earn more than caucasian/europian white males, and that jewish & hindu indian males (entreprenureship & sales) offset all the workers who are earning way less than they are. Also its important to look at which degree & the number of degrees awarded, growth rate of industry, and current U-6 rate to get the whole idea.
The stats from 2006 make more sense, considering the number of people (39%) of Americans who are “working class” & “poverty class”. I highly doubt the average joe is earning $40-50,000 with nothing more than an associates degree, although you have to consider that age is a major factor.
Currently the baby boomers make up the majority of workers, so they would be earning $50k a year ($42k at age 65, according to SSI, is the average right now). But the average male, at age 28, is earning around $28,000 a year, with an associates or 5-10 years work experience. A sad figure to be sure. I had poor parents growing up, so I’m obsessed with job security, lifelong education, and becoming as productive as possible & saving as much $ as possible.
What’s disturbing is that 80% of us will be depending wholly on SSI for retirement, and only 6% of Americans will taste the financial freedom of being a millionaire. Meanwhile the wealthy continue to eliminate jobs via technology, and poor stupid people vote republican to make the rich, richer.
March 31, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Wow, really agreed with what you said until that last line. Democrats claim to raise taxes on the rich during campaign time but when re-elected, tax the middle class. Don’t believe everything you read and hear in the mainstream media! Keep voting democrat and as a white male, you will indeed pay higher taxes!
December 10, 2011 at 9:44 am
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March 5, 2012 at 11:05 am
[...] been the springboard out of poverty. Indeed, impressive facts certify that the education path genuinely works. If you have less than a high school education you will likely join the ranks of the poor. Get a [...]
March 5, 2012 at 2:37 pm
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March 22, 2012 at 9:48 am
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This is a mockery of what many earn as income. What about those highly educated, but are grossly underemployed. I for one, with a Ph.D and 2 master’s degrees in sciences, I am still searching for an elusive where I belong.
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