The Role of College Majors in Earnings Inequality among College Graduates

by Dirk Witteveen, (University of Oxford) and Paul Attewell, (The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY))

This article studies the relationship between undergraduate programs and earnings inequality among college graduates in the United States. The authors consider two perspectives to understand the role of undergraduate majors in earnings inequality. First, they focus on the distribution of college majors across occupations, asking whether the concentration of college majors within an occupation is associated with occupational-level earnings. Second, they examine the importance of “matching” an individual’s own college major with the commonly held major in the occupation.

Full article is available here.

December 15, 2023 | News