The Premium From a College Degree

More data reinforcing the fact that in today’s economy, a college education is the smartest money you can spend:

The so-called college wage premium – economists’ fancy way of saying how much more workers with a college degree are paid than other workers without one – has widened over the last three decades. Degree-holders earn more than 80 percent more than their peers with just a high school diploma, up from about 40 percent more as of the late 1970s.

And:

The rate of return on that investment in school “exceeds the historical return on practically any conventional investment, including stocks, bonds, and real estate,” find the scholars, Adam Looney and Michael Greenstone, who also is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Via David Leonhardt.