Returns to Tertiary Education and the Differences by Gender, Race, Citizenship, and Occupation

Studies that quantify the wage premium to different levels of tertiary education and compare them across people of different sex, races, citizenship statuses, and occupations are rare. In this paper, we compare the average yearly income margin of different levels of tertiary education, irrespective of major or attended school, to that of a person who completed only secondary education. We focus on the following levels of tertiary education: college without a degree, an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees. Using micro data from the US Census Bureau from the years 2014 to 2019 and the Mincer equation, we estimate a regression for each gender, race, citizenship, and occupation category. The earnings premium for the different levels of tertiary education, each compared to the earnings of someone with no tertiary education, are as follows: less than a year of college without a degree: 3.8; some years of college without a degree: 5.8%; associate: 11.3%; bachelor’s: 34.6%; master’s: 51.5%; doctoral: 68.6%; and professional: 71.3%.