The gender earnings gap among full-time workers narrowed substantially in the 1980s. Previous research has established that increases in the amount of and returns to work experience and schooling among women were primarily responsible for that trend. This paper, which uses data from the National...

This article shows that college performance and selectivity have significant effects on earnings. It suggests that work that does not include college performance overstates the effect of college selectivity for whites and understates it for blacks. While the size of the effect of college...

Analysts disagree about whether the Civil Rights/Black Power eras lessened the influence of skin tone on education. The paper finds that, holding family background constant, the educational disadvantages of dark and very dark blacks persisted between younger and older age cohorts. On the other...