IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v70y2025i2p214-237.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Earnings Premium: Major, Gender, and Double Majors in Economic Cycles

Author

Listed:
  • Edinaldo Tebaldi
  • Bruce Elmslie
  • Ross Gittell

Abstract

The value of higher education is currently being questioned. This article uses microdata from the 2009–2022 American Community Survey (ACS) to analyze the impact of educational attainment, major, and double majors on labor market outcomes. By analyzing earnings and college majors, this research refines our understanding of education’s value for researchers, policymakers, and prospective students. Our work corroborates previous findings that bachelor’s degrees contribute significantly to higher earnings and that the choice of college major affects earnings. We also show that the increased resilience to economic downturns found for bachelor’s degree holders is positive for all majors, and that the positive impact differs by gender. We also show that the wage differential for BD holders follows a bell-shaped curve throughout a person’s lifetime. The decline in the wage premium in later years is particularly pronounced and starts earlier for women.

Suggested Citation

  • Edinaldo Tebaldi & Bruce Elmslie & Ross Gittell, 2025. "The Earnings Premium: Major, Gender, and Double Majors in Economic Cycles," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 70(2), pages 214-237, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:70:y:2025:i:2:p:214-237
    DOI: 10.1177/05694345251351134
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05694345251351134
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/05694345251351134?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:sae:amerec:v:70:y:2025:i:2:p:214-237. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    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.