The Average Mid-Forties Male College Graduate Earns 55% More Than His Female Counterparts

New research making use of enormously large Census Bureau databases sheds additional light on the gender pay gap. The researchers tracked individual firms and their workers over time to study the gender gap in average quarterly earnings from 1995 to 2008. They find that the earnings gap between college-educated men and women at the start of their careers is small, but by the time these individuals reach their career peak the gender pay gap is very large. The average male college graduate by his early forties earns roughly 55% percent more than the average college graduate female. They find that the usual explanation – that women tend to work in lower-paying sectors and roles — only explains about a third of the increase in the gender earnings gap. Among the more salient reasons they found: women who stay in the same firm see their earnings grow more slowly than men who stay in the same firm. Among women who switch jobs, whether they see a wage increase largely hinges on whether they’re married: married women didn’t see much of an earnings increase when they switch jobs, although single women’s salary patterns looked more like men’s.