Graduate Education and the Earnings of Men and Women

This research project will study the earnings and careers of highly educated men and women, with a focus on graduate education. A large fraction of college graduates choose to obtain an advanced degree, but there is little reliable information about the labor market payoff to graduate study. The project will provide estimates for men and for women of the value of an Masters in Business Administration (MBA), a Juris Doctor (JD), a Master of Science (MS) in engineering, and several other advanced degrees.

The research will also explore how the return to specific graduate degrees depends on a person’s college major and on the quality of the school. The estimated returns would be useful to individuals making education decisions and to policy makers deciding where to invest in graduate education. The project will use the estimates to decompose earnings differences between highly educated men and women into gender differences in college major choice; gender differences in graduate degree choice; gender differences in the labor market return to specific college majors and advanced degrees; and other factors.

The final part of the project will study how trends in the college major, graduate field, and occupation choices of men and women have influenced the gender gaps in occupational attainment and earnings over the last several decades.

The project will involve merging data from surveys conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) with Census surveys and earnings and employment histories from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program. These data will be a new and important resource for researchers and will amplify the value of the NCSES surveys.

Fixed effects strategies will be used to address the selection and omitted variables problems associated with estimating returns to specific graduate degrees. Various decomposition methods will be used to decompose gender gaps in occupational attainment and earnings. Hierarchical clustering methods will be used to study gender differences in sequences of graduate education, labor force participation, and occupation over a career.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.