White Men Still Outearn Other Groups
By GENARO C. ARMAS
Associated Press Writer
March 21, 2003, 10:05 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Educational gaps between men and women and whites and
blacks have narrowed in recent years, but this much has not changed: A
highly educated white man still makes much more money than anyone else.
On average, a white man with a college diploma earned about $65,000 in
2001. Similarly educated white women made about 40 percent less, while
black and Hispanic men earned 30 percent less, according to Census
Bureau estimates being released Friday.
Almost half of Asian residents 25 and older have graduated from college,
nearly twice the rate of whites. Still, Asians earned about 8 percent
less than whites.
"There's a wedge between minority education gains and the payoff, and
that's discrimination and the kinds of job opportunities available,"
said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a
labor-supported think tank.
There were similar disparities between white men and women on other
educational levels. Income gaps have narrowed slightly since 1991 at the
high school level and grown a bit at the college level.
Differences in income were slightly lower on other educational levels
between white men and minorities. For instance, black men who are high
school graduates earned about 25 percent less than comparably educated
whites, and black men who held master's degrees earned 20 percent less
than their white counterparts.
Looking back a decade, income gaps have edged up between whites and
minorities. Historical data was not available for Asians.
"It doesn't do as much for closing gaps as it does to improving the
floors that people are moving from," said demographer Roderick Harrison
of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which studies
issues of importance to minorities. "It's like catching up with a
speeding train."
The figures come from the Census Bureau's annual look at educational
achievement in America, culled from a survey in March 2002. The bureau
recorded record high educational levels for nearly every group and the
nation overall.
Nationally, 84 percent of U.S. residents 25 and older are high school
graduates, the Census Bureau found. By gender, it was 83.8 percent for
men and 84.4 percent for women.
Nearly 27 percent are college graduates -- almost 29 percent of men and
25 percent of women.
The gap between men and women has been narrowing since the 1970s,
largely due to younger, more educated women steadily replacing older,
less-educated women in the work force, Census Bureau analyst Jennifer
Day said.
For example, among 25- to 29-year-olds, nearly 32 percent of women have
college diplomas, compared with 27 percent of men.
Whites, regardless of gender, remain more likely to be better educated
than blacks and Hispanics. More than 29 percent of whites are college
graduates, compared with 17 percent of blacks and about 11 percent of
Hispanics, all record highs.
For blacks, disparities in high school graduation have narrowed
dramatically with whites over the past 30 years. The college education
gap has narrowed slightly between 1997 and 2002, but generally has
increased since the 1970s.
Experts say that because whites typically make more money, that usually
leads to more access to college.
Among Hispanics, the high school education gap with whites has remained
level since 1970. Despite the record high, the college education gap
between whites and Hispanics has grown during the 1990s in large part
because of an increase in the number of less-educated Hispanic
immigrants, Bernstein said.
Income disparities across educational levels were far lower among white
women and other minorities. In fact, Asian women with bachelor's and
master's degrees earned more money than similarly educated white women.
The federal government considers "Hispanic" to be an ethnicity instead
of a race and people who are Hispanic can be of any race.
The most thorough historical data available in the report was for whites
and blacks, regardless of Hispanic origin.
* __
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html
AAM Website: http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|