Race, Cognitive Ability, and Wage Inequality
interracial and intraracial wage inequalities have increased substantially during the 1980s and 1990s. For example, after adjusting for differences in experience, length of time on the job, and other relevant factors, a college graduate's weekly earnings in 1979 were 31 percent greater than the weekly earnings of a high school graduate (Gottschalk 1997). By the early 1990s, the weekly earnings premium for college graduates was 53 percent. Wage data from the Current Population Survey, a widely used U.S. government database, show that AfricanAmerican progress came to a sudden halt in 1975, with whites maintaining at least a 15 percent wage premium from the mid-1970s onward. Worst, all men at or below the 77th percentile saw their weekly wages decline between 1973 and 1994 (after adjusting for inflation), while the wages of the highest earners increased. Women at the 30th percentile or lower did not lose ground during this period, but they did not make much