When it Comes to Earnings, Higher Education Isn't the Whole Story

From the Chronicle of Higher Education. Let's focus on the gender and racial aspects of this:

Like the study on college majors, this new research also reveals earnings gaps for women and minorities. The report refers to gender and race as "wild cards that matter more than education or occupation in determining earnings."

Women earn less money than men over a lifetime at every level of education. At the median, a man with some college but no degree earns nearly as much as a woman with a bachelor's degree, and a woman must hold a Ph.D. or professional degree to surpass what a man makes with a bachelor's.

White workers earn more than African-American and Latino workers at every level of education. Asian workers, in contrast, make more money than white workers at the three graduate levels: master's, Ph.D., and professional degrees.

The report also includes lists of the 10 most common occupations for workers with each level of education and their median lifetime earnings, which help illuminate the occupation-based variation within education levels.

What the article doesn't seem to mention is what accounts for the variation according to gender and race. Why don't women earn as much as men? Why don't Blacks or Latinos make as much as white workers?

Via Instapundit!