“Is college worth it?” Boston Fed research indicates the answer is yes. It shows a correlation between higher salaries and higher educational attainment in New England over the last 40 years. Also, people with more education have higher starting wages and steeper salary raises throughout their careers.

But there’s nuance.

Pinghui Wu is a senior economist who co-wrote the recent research. She discusses why New England has higher educational attainment than most regions, and how that affects incomes. She also talks about the “college premium” – the fact that workers with college degrees earn more than those with high school degrees. And she explains how that premium grows or shrinks based on factors like gender, what people study, and the availability of work in a skilled trade.

The paper Pinghui Wu co-authored is “Educational Attainment and Wage Growth in New England: Evidence From Four Decades of Administrative Wage Records.”

A related working paper is “Educational Attainment and the Evolution of Cumulative Earnings across 45 US Birth Cohorts.”

For more interviews and analysis of the economy in New England and nationwide, visit BostonFed.org/SixHundredAtlantic.aspx. Subscribe to our email list to stay updated on new episodes.