IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfel/96630.html

Falling College Wage Premiums by Race and Ethnicity

Author

Listed:
  • Leila Bengali
  • Marcus Sander
  • Robert G. Valletta
  • Cindy Zhao

Abstract

Workers with a college degree typically earn substantially more than workers with less education. This so-called college wage premium increased for several decades, but it has been flat to down in recent years and declined notably since the pandemic. Analysis indicates that this reflects an acceleration of wage gains for high school graduates rather than a slowdown for college graduates. This pattern is most evident for workers in racial and ethnic groups other than White, possibly reflecting an unusually tight labor market that may have altered their college attendance decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Leila Bengali & Marcus Sander & Robert G. Valletta & Cindy Zhao, 2023. "Falling College Wage Premiums by Race and Ethnicity," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2023(22), pages 1-6, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:96630
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/el2023-22.pdf
    File Function: Full text - article PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leila Bengali & Mary C. Daly, 2014. "Is it still worth going to college?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. Ashworth, Jared & Ransom, Tyler, 2019. "Has the college wage premium continued to rise? Evidence from multiple U.S. surveys," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 149-154.
    3. David J. Deming, 2023. "Why Do Wages Grow Faster for Educated Workers?," NBER Working Papers 31373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. David Autor & Arindrajit Dube & Annie McGrew, 2023. "The unexpected compression: Competition at work in the low wage labor market," POID Working Papers 076, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    5. Stephanie R. Aaronson & Mary C. Daly & William L. Wascher & David W. Wilcox, 2019. "Okun Revisited: Who Benefits Most from a Strong Economy?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 50(1 (Spring), pages 333-404.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bengali, Leila & Valletta, Robert G. & Zhao, Cindy, 2025. "Explaining Stagnation in the College Wage Premium," IZA Discussion Papers 17717, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martín Almuzara & Richard Audoly & Davide Melcangi, 2025. "A Measure of Trend Wage Inflation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(5), pages 508-520, August.
    2. Bengali, Leila & Valletta, Robert G. & Zhao, Cindy, 2025. "Explaining Stagnation in the College Wage Premium," IZA Discussion Papers 17717, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Jeffrey T. Denning & Eric R. Eide & Kevin J. Mumford & Richard W. Patterson & Merrill Warnick, 2022. "Why Have College Completion Rates Increased?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 1-29, July.
    4. Dossche, Maarten & Kolndrekaj, Aleksandra & Propst, Maximilian & Ramos Perez, Javier & Slacalek, Jiri & Vegh, Marton, 2024. "Immigration and the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in the euro area: Implications for economic policies," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 46(5), pages 867-886.
    5. Bennani, Hamza, 2023. "Effect of monetary policy shocks on the racial unemployment rates in the US," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(1).
    6. Gökten, Meryem & Heimberger, Philipp & Lichtenberger, Andreas, 2024. "How far from full employment? The European unemployment problem revisited," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    7. Marx, Ive & Haapanala, Henri & Marchal, Sarah, 2024. "Is Poverty Reduction in Europe Doomed? Conjectures, Facts and a Cautiously Optimistic Conclusion," IZA Discussion Papers 16967, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Simon, Curtis J., 2025. "Complexity and colocation of the college-educated: Sort of complements," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    9. Mattias Vermeiren, 2025. "Defining Price Stability: Public Accountability of the European Central Bank’s Goal Independence," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 13.
    10. Joao Guerreiro & Jonathon Hazell & Chen Lian & Christina Patterson, 2024. "Why Do Workers Dislike Inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs," Discussion Papers 2440, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    11. Felipe Alves & Giovanni L. Violante, 2024. "From Micro to Macro Hysteresis: Long-Run Effects of Monetary Policy," Staff Working Papers 24-39, Bank of Canada.
    12. Acton, Riley & Cortes, Kalena E. & Miller, Lois & Morales, Camila, 2024. "Distance to Degrees: How College Proximity Shapes Students' Enrollment Choices and Attainment across Race-Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status," IZA Discussion Papers 17338, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. C. Mistretta-Belna., 2014. "Is the rise in student loan debt in the United States a source of economic fragility?," Quarterly selection of articles - Bulletin de la Banque de France, Banque de France, issue 35, pages 55-73, autumn.
    14. Michael Kaganovich & Morgan Taylor & Ruli Xiao, 2023. "Gender Differences in Persistence in a Field of Study: This Isn’t All about Grades," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(4), pages 503-556.
    15. David J. Deming & Mikko I. Silliman, 2024. "Skills and Human Capital in the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 32908, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ahmad Omar, 2024. "When Mortgage Lock-In Locks Out Homebuyers," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 9(2), pages 2-9, June.
    17. Jose Maria Barrero & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "Long Social Distancing," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(S1), pages 129-172.
    18. Kevin Curran, 2024. "Regional Spotlight: Wage Inequality Across the U.S," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 9(2), pages 19-26, June.
    19. Bertholet Nicolás & Montes Rojas Gabriel & Toledo Fernando, 2024. "Estimación de curva de Phillips y cociente de sacrificio en Argentina. Un análisis empírico para el período 2003-2022," Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4711, Asociación Argentina de Economía Política.
    20. Krapf Matthias, 2024. "Die Ungleichheit der zu versteuernden Vermögen in der Schweiz während der Covid-19-Pandemie," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 25(3-4), pages 286-298.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfel:96630. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.