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Prior days' news: By date | Search This week's print issue Back issues: By date | Search March 26, 2008Study Finds Parental Income Helps Determine Payoff From a Bachelor's DegreeNew York— The short-term economic benefits that people derive from earning a bachelor’s degree vary according to their own parents’ economic situation, according to a study presented here this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The study, by Marvin A. Titus, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Maryland at College Park, notes that many studies have concluded that people with bachelor’s degrees earn substantially more than people without them, but none of the previous studies have looked at the influence of students’ family wealth on how much such degrees pay off. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Students survey — examining a cohort that entered college in the fall of 1995 — Mr. Titus looked at the incomes earned in 2001 by more than 3,000 study subjects who were employed full-time at that point. He framed such data in the context of family income, while seeking to control for factors such as the selectivity of the college they attended. The good news his paper offers for low-income students is that people from families in society’s bottom socioeconomic quartile appear to reap slightly bigger economic gains from earning a bachelor’s degree than students from the top quartile. The bad news is that people from families in the wealthiest fourth of society earned higher incomes regardless of whether they completed college. People from families in the bottom quartile earned an average of $31,059 if they had a bachelor’s degree, $27,126 if they didn’t. People from families in the top quartile earned an average of $35,913 with a bachelor’s degree, and $31,814 without one. Mr. Titus’s paper suggests that efforts to improve college retention should take into account the payoff of degree completion for different subsets of the population to better understand the decisions students make. The paper says more research is needed on how college students from different subsets of the population acquire social capital that will influence their earnings. —Peter Schmidt Posted on Wednesday March 26, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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“The good news his paper offers for low-income students is that people from families in society’s bottom socioeconomic quartile appear to reap slightly bigger economic gains from earning a bachelor’s degree than students from the top quartile.”
I’m confused. The numbers provided after this comment seem to indicate that people from families in the top quartile have a higher percentage increase and a higher dollar increase for earning a bachelor’s than those in the lower quartile. I don’t understand what the “better economic gains” are for people in the lower quartile. Can someone please explain?
— K. Weiss Mar 26, 03:37 PM #
KW—the richer have the greater absolute gain (barely) but the poorer have the greater percentage gain: absolute gain/nondegree average], though barely. Much ado about little it would seem.
— vg Mar 26, 03:51 PM #
Ditto to K. Weiss’ comments. Was the article trying to point out that people WITHOUT Bachelor’s degrees from families in the top wealth quartile still earned more than those WITH Bachelor’s degrees from the bottom wealth quartile? If so, does that really surprise anyone?
— Don Mar 26, 04:01 PM #
At a meeting re the Pew Leadership Award for Undergraduate Teaching I recall a presentation where it was asserted that by the second job after completing the bachelor’s degree the influence of institution of origin of degree and the influence of family status essentially became insignificant.
— Lloyd Mar 26, 05:11 PM #
In the noise of other variables and effects these are lost.
— Richard Tabor Greene Mar 26, 10:27 PM #
I think the important information in this article is that wealthy kids don’t really need a BA as much as poor people in general – surprise! If you’re rich, mom and dad can get you a decent paying job. Social capital is more important than education in all but the most extreme situations – mom and dad can’t get you a job as a brain surgeon.
— Muap Conners Mar 27, 08:19 AM #
It also likely depends on what your degree is in. I think comparisons are enhanced when the type of degree/major chosen is included rather pooling all grads with bachelor’s degrees together. Those who choose engineering, for example, may reap more economic benefits than those with a liberal arts degree. Choices may be affected by socio-economic class.
— KM Mar 27, 09:43 AM #
In a similarly relevant study, income levels correlated positively with ability to buy larger homes, nicer cars, or a yacht.
Score another one for science!
— Donna Changstein Mar 27, 03:03 PM #
So it seems that income drives college attendance as much as the other way around. So much for the (mistaken) strategy of giving everyone a college degree as a way of increasing income.
— SB Mar 27, 04:24 PM #