According to the majority-minority paradigm, racial and ethnic minorities have lower socioeconomic characteristics than whites owing to discrimination. Asian Americans defy this conventional view, however, at least on average. Asian Americans tend to have higher mean levels of educational achievements, and several recent studies indicate approximate parity with whites in most arenas of the labor market for those Asian Americans who were schooled in the United

We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings differentials between white and Asian American men. We extend prior literature by disaggregating Asian Americans by their immigration status in relation to the U.S. educational system, and by accounting for the effects of field of study and college type. Net of the latter variables and other demographic controls, native-born Asian American men have 8 percent lower earnings than do measurably comparable white men. Our findings show that Asian American men who were schooled entirely overseas have substantial earnings disadvantages, while Asian American men who obtained their highest degree in the United States but completed high school overseas have an intermediate earnings disadvantage. Net of the control variables, including region of residence, only 1.5-generation Asian American men appear to have reached full parity with whites. Most Asian American men lag at least slightly behind white men in terms of full equality in the labor market net of the measured covariates in our statistical models. No one theoretical approach seems able to explain our findings; instead, we suggest the relevance of several perspectives, including the racialized hierarchy view, the demographic heterogeneity approach, and assimilation theory.

Wage inequality has increased dramatically in the United States since the 1980s. This article investigates the relationship between this trend and occupational structure measured at the three-digit level. Using the Current Population Survey from 1983 to 2002, we find that the direct association between occupations and wage inequality declined over this period as within-occupational inequality grew faster than betweenoccupational inequality. We estimate multilevel growth models using detailed occupational categories as the unit of analysis to assess how the characteristics of occupations affect changes in mean wages and levels of wage inequality across this time period. The results indicate that changes in mean wages across occupations vary depending on the characteristics of individuals in those occupations and that intraoccupational inequality is difficult to predict using conventional labor force data. These findings seem largely inconsistent with the common sociological view of occupation as the most fundamental feature of the labor market. Correspondingly, a more comprehensive approach—one that incorporates the effects of organizational variables and market processes on rising wage inequality in the New Economy—is warranted.

Differences in lifetime earnings by educational attainment have been of great research and policy interest. Although a large literature examines earnings differences by educational attainment, research on lifetime earnings—which refers to total accumulated earnings from entry into the labor market until retirement—remains limited because of the paucity of adequate data. Using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal tax earnings as recorded by the Social Security Administration, we estimate the 50-year work career effects of education on lifetime earnings for men and women. By overcoming the purely synthetic cohort approach, our results provide a more realistic appraisal of actual patterns of lifetime earnings. Detailed estimates are provided for gross lifetime earnings by education; net lifetime earnings after controlling for covariates associated with the probability of obtaining a bachelor’s degree; and the net present 50-year lifetime value of education at age 20. In addition, we provide estimates that include individuals with zero earnings and disability. We also assess the adequacy of the purely synthetic cohort approach, which uses age differences in earnings observed in cross-sectional surveys to approximate lifetime earnings. Overall, our results confirm the persistent positive effects of higher education on earnings over different stages of the work career and over a lifetime, but also reveal notably smaller net effects on lifetime earnings compared with previously reported estimates. We discuss the implications of these and other findings.

Our understanding about the relationship between education and lifetime earnings often neglects differences by field of study. Utilizing data that matches respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal earnings records based on administrative tax information, we investigate the trajectories of annual earnings following the same individuals over 20 years and then estimate the long-term effects of field of study on earnings for U.S. men and women. Our results provide new evidence revealing large lifetime earnings gaps across field of study. We show important differences in individuals’ earnings trajectories across the different stages of the work-life by field of study. In addition, the gaps in 40-year (i.e., ages 20 to 59) median lifetime earnings among college graduates by field of study are larger, in many instances, than the median gap between high school graduates and college graduates overall. Significant variation is also found among graduate degree holders. Our results uncover important similarities and differences between men and women with regard to the long-term earnings differentials associated with field of study. In general, these findings underscore field of study as a critical dimension of horizontal stratification in educational attainment. Other implications of the empirical findings are also discussed.