More foreign-born residents have obtained advanced degrees in the United States than native-born Americans have, according to a new Census Bureau report, “Educational Attainment in the United States, 2007.”
In 2007, 11 percent of foreign-born residents reported they had obtained at least a master’s degree, whereas only 10 percent of their native-born counterparts had done so.
Statistics from the American Community Survey, which annually collects data with a methodology similar to the Census Bureau’s, also indicate that geographic location plays a big role in determining who obtains a bachelor’s degree.
The Northeast saw the highest percentage of degree-earning residents, with 32 percent of both foreign- and native-born residents earning a degree. But there were some disparities in other regions of the country. In the West, foreign-born residents had fewer degrees than did native-born residents (24 percent and 31 percent, respectively), whereas in the Midwest, 31 percent of foreign-born and 26 percent of native-born residents had degrees.
Among other findings, the report also said that:
Employees with bachelor’s degrees earned about $20,000 more annually than their counterparts with only a high-school education.
Slightly more women than men completed high school, but slightly more men obtained bachelor’s degrees.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans age 25 and older reported having a bachelor’s degree, which represents a fivefold increase since the Census Bureau started tracking higher-education attainment, in 1940.
—Megan Eckstein
