Earnings of college graduates: women compared with men

Daniel E. Hecker is a labor economist in the Office of Employment Projections, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among college graduates aged 25 to 64, women’s median annual earnings were 73 percent of men’s in 1993. When median earnings of women are compared with those of men of a similar age and with similar levels of education, major fields of study, and occupational characteristics, however, the earnings gap narrowed progressively, although still spanning a wide range: in some cases, women earned nearly as much as, or even more than, men with the same characteristics, while in others, women earned much less. This article uses a 1993 National Science Foundation survey to examine the differences between the earnings of men and women graduates in order to answer the question, How much do women earn compared with men? The short answer to this question is that there are many answers to it: in some fields of study and occupations women do particularly well in relation to men, in others they do not fare so well, and in still others they are in between.