"One Market Under God, and Heaven Help Us All"

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Thu Jul 27 20:02:49 PDT 2000


At 07:22 PM 7/27/00 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote:
>Doug, certainly the averages have increased, but have degrees from lower
>ranking colleges seen much of an increase in value. Many of our graduates
>are doing jobs that high school students might have done a few decades
>ago.
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > >economic value of college degrees (despite college premiums relative
> > >to high-school diplomas) hasn't improved (see excerpts from "Recent
> > >Trends in Wages, Incomes, and Wealth in the United States" by John
> > >Schmitt, Lawrence Mishel, and Jared Bernstein I posted)
> >
> > How can you say the economic value of a bachelor's degree hasn't
> > improved when the college premium has expanded over the last 20 years?
> >
> > Doug

haven't read this stuff since i did some benchmarking community research on education and job training about 5 years ago. but, as i recall, the issue is that the wages of those with a high school degree have dropped dramatically because of deunionization. the college premium is relative to what you would earn without it, with only a highschool or less than highschool degree. the college premium looks greater but it is being compared to wages of non college degreed that have been steadily declining.

same deal with women's wage gains: much of the gain is explained by the fact that men's wages decreased (also attributed to the decline in unionized jobs that paid fairly well)

in other words, it's not like women are getting paid more per se (tho disagregating the data tells a better story than i'm doing here). it's that men's wages have decreased over all. being a white man gets you less than it used to. similarly, it's not like the college premium is necessarily buying higher wages for all college educated. rather, it's that a high school degree is buying less than it did.


>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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