In the United States at least, people with a post-secondary degree tend to earn more than people without one. For instance, looking at the statistics for people aged 25-34 in 2007, the median annual income for high-school graduates was about $25,000, while people with an Associates (2-year) degree earned $31,000, and those with a Bachelor's (4-year) degree earned nearly $41,000. Since earning these degrees has such a positive affect on income, it should be good news for women that, as Mark Perry recently noted in his blog, women are now receiving more post-secondary degrees than men, even at the doctoral level.
However, if you look at the situation in more detail, using the US Department of Education statistics for the 2006-2007 graduation year (for bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees), you'll find that higher education may not be as women-dominated as the overall statistics would indicate:
- In Computer Science, women receive only about 20% to 25% of the degrees at each level.
- In Engineering, women receive only about 15% to 20% of the degrees at each level.
- In Math, women receive about 44% of the Bachelor's degrees, 40% of Masters degrees, and 30% of Doctoral degrees.
- In the Physical Sciences, women receive about 40% of the Bachelors and Masters degrees, and 30% of Doctoral degrees.
- Women continue to receive more degrees than men at all levels in areas they have dominated since at least the early 1970s: Ethnic and Gender Studies, Communication, Education, English Language and Literature, Foreign Languages, Liberal Arts, Public Administration, Social Services, and Visual and Performing Arts.
- There has been a shift in the area of Biological Sciences from male-dominated at all levels in the 1950s to female-dominated at all levels today.
- Women continue to dominate the Health Sciences area at the bachelors and masters degree level (this has been true since the 1970s), and are also now (since the 1980s) ahead in doctoral degrees.
- In Psychology, women surpassed men at the Bachelors degree level in the late 1970s, and at the doctoral degree level in the mid 1980s.
Looking at the income statistics for men and women separately (again, in the 25-34 age group for 2007, so as to discount any left-over problems from previous decades), we can see that the median income for all women is $27,000 per year, while for men it is about $33,500, in spite of the fact that a higher percentage of women have post-secondary degrees. In fact, men in this age group with 4-year degrees are earning about $47,000, while women earn $36,000. This is likely due to the difference in the subject area of the degrees noted above -- salaries for engineers are certainly higher than those for teachers.
So, I am not sure that the fact that women are earning more college degrees than men translates into anything very meaningful.