Bridging the divide: examining field of study gender earnings disparities in the early career

The majority of the gender earnings gap emerges in the first five years of a career. With the early career being a vital time in establishing an earnings trend for oneself, understanding the factors that influence the early career earnings gap is vital. This paper uses a newly released Federal Score Card data that reports median three years postgraduation earnings data disaggregated by gender and degree program. This data set is used to identify institution and programs that have large impacts of the gender earnings gap. Using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression I find that schools in less dense and more rural regions are associated with a higher earnings gap compared to those in more dense regions. The OLS regression also identified that public colleges have a lower wage gap then private colleges and that the wage gap increases with attainment of advanced degrees. To address the high dimensionality of the whole data set (nearly 2500 variables), Lasso Regression is used. This analysis reveals which higher education institutions and degree programs have the largest impacts on the gender earnings gap.