Thursday, September 13, 2018

The Value of a Degree

Is a college degree losing its value? The Census Bureau’s annual report on income and poverty released yesterday highlights this depressing fact: Among bachelor’s degree recipients, roughly 3.6 million or 4.8 percent were living in poverty in 2017, according to the Census Bureau. That’s up from 3.3 million and 4.5 percent in 2016. Bachelor’s degree recipients were the only educational cohort to see the number or the share of people in poverty rise among their ranks.

Even with this increase, though, among educational attainment groups, people with at least a bachelor’s degree had the lowest poverty rates in 2017. People with at least a bachelor’s degree in 2017 represented 35.0 percent of all people aged 25 and older, but just 16.5 percent of people aged 25 and older in poverty.

The 2017 poverty rate for those with a high school diploma but with no college was 12.7 percent, down from 13.3 percent in 2016. For those with some college but no degree, 8.8 percent were in poverty in 2017, a decline from 9.4 percent in 2016.

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