>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.
Not exactly. The overall gender gap did narrow, in part because men's real wages fell, but women's wages also rose. Ditto the education premium - non-college folks took a hit, but folks with college and more also saw wage increases. Here are some figures, computed from spreadsheets on the EPI site (and what's with this 1997 ending date, Max? it's 2000!):
AVERAGE HOURLY WAGE BY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT annual growth rate by period
men women
---------------------------------- ----------------------------------
some adv some adv
< HS HS coll coll degree < HS HS coll coll degree 1973-80 -0.7% -0.9% -0.6% -0.8% -0.5% | 0.3% -0.3% -0.3% -1.6% -2.1% 1980-90 -1.9% -1.2% -0.3% 0.2% 1.3% | -0.9% -0.1% 0.7% 1.5% 1.4% 1990-97 -1.9% -0.4% -1.0% 0.1% 0.3% | -0.8% 0.0% -0.6% 0.8% 1.2%