Higher Education Is the Major Force in Closing the Black-White Income Gap

New statistics from the Census Bureau confirm the powerful economic advantage that accrues to African Americans who hold a four-year college degree. The most current figures, for the year 2004, show that blacks with a college diploma now have a median income that is 90 percent of the median income of similarly educated non-Hispanic whites. Blacks with a master’s degree have incomes nearly equal to those of whites with a master’s degree. Blacks with a doctorate actually have higher incomes than similarly educated non-Hispanic whites.

These are extraordinary achievements that have been consistently overlooked by most commentators.

New figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau unequivocally show that possession of a four-year college degree not only greatly increases the incomes of African Americans but goes almost all the way in closing the economic gap between blacks and whites. This is dramatic and exciting proof of the sure progress that blacks achieve when they pursue and succeed in higher education.
Here is the set of statistics showing how improved educational attainment advances the incomes of highly educated blacks as compared to those with lower levels of schooling.


The first point to note is that blacks with a four-year college degree now earn on average nearly double the income of blacks who have no better than a high school diploma. African Americans with a two-year associate’s degree improve their incomes by 41 percent over blacks with just a high school diploma. But blacks with a four-year college degree outperform blacks with a high school diploma by 93.4 percent. In 2004 blacks holding only a high school diploma had a median income of $18,657. The median income of blacks with a bachelor’s degree (but no graduate degree) was $36,086.

The black-white income gap for holders of professional degrees has traditionally been quite large. The economic opportunities for whites with a professional degree continue to be far superior than they are for blacks with a professional degree. White professionals — lawyers, dentists, accountants, and engineers, to name a few — are far more likely to serve economically well-off and better established white clients and therefore are in a position to charge higher fees and earn greater incomes. On the other hand, a great number of whites are still reluctant to seek out the services of black professionals. Therefore, many blacks with professional degrees perform services for an exclusively black clientele and in all likelihood are not able to charge fees comparable to those of white professionals. These factors explain to some degree the large income gap that has existed between white and black professionals.

But now there is significant progress to report. In 2004 blacks with a professional degree had a median income of $72,749. This was 95 percent of the median income of whites with a professional degree. In 2004 black professionals increased their median income by a whopping 18 percent.
There is also an income gap between blacks and whites who hold doctoral degrees. But this time the racial gap is in favor of blacks. In 2004 blacks with a doctorate had a median income of $74,207. This was slightly higher than the median income of whites with doctoral degrees, which stands at $73,993. The high demand for black academics at American colleges and universities produces a good job market with high wages for blacks with doctoral degrees.

Favorable statistics on the black-white income gap for college graduates always must be viewed in light of the fact that black college graduates still make up only a small portion of the entire black population of the United States. According to the latest count, there are 36.4 million people in the United States whom the Census Bureau classifies as black. Of these, about 11 percent hold a four-year college degree. Therefore, one must always keep in mind that the encouraging economic figures we report here apply to only one in every nine African Americans.

 Source: jbhe.com