Ladies, we hate the ruin your day, but a new study finds that women still have a ways to go in the fight for equality.
A new Georgetown University study says that women must obtain a doctoral degree to earn as much as a man with just a bachelor’s degree.
When it comes to women with bachelor’s degrees, they’re only making as much as a man who drops out of high school, according to the study.
Researches at Georgetown examined lifetime earnings for all education levels for the study and earnings by occupation, age, race, ethnicity and gender.
They found that race, ethnicity and gender are “wildcards” that matter more than education or occupation in determining earnings:
Over the course of their lifetime, women who obtain a Bachelor’s degree make over $650,000 less than men with the same level of education. The smallest gender gaps within postsecondary educational bands occurs among those with Associate’s degrees and those with Doctoral degrees, where women earn about $400,000 and $600,000 less than men over a lifetime, respectively. However, the largest gender gap in earnings is for those with Professional degrees: men earn about a million dollar more over a lifetime than women with these degrees.
The news is not much better for some minority workers. The study found that blacks and Latinos with master’s degrees will not earn as much as Caucasians with bachelor’s degrees.
Feeling discouraged? Researchers found that higher education is still “almost always worth it,” saying it will lead to higher earnings over a lifetime, in general:
In 2002, a Bachelor’s degree-holder could expect to earn 75 percent more over a lifetime than someone with only a high school diploma. Today, that premium is 84 percent.
