Hispanic women and white women in Connecticut: The psychology of major choice and wage differentials

Latinas and Latino earnings remain below those of Whites, even after controlling for educational attainment within the state of Connecticut. Educational attainment differences contribute to gap in earnings between Hispanics and Whites within the state, but much of that gap remains. 

To analyze a potential source of this disparity, this paper uses a combination of economic and psychological theory to focus on the effect of college major on estimated starting salaries of White and Hispanic bachelor’s degree recipients from Connecticut colleges and universities.  Economists have examined the choice of college major in terms of compensating wage differentials where the pay for a specific job depended upon the characteristics of the career path chosen, as where this paper empirically explores the distributional difference across majors between Hispanic women and White women as well as the psychological reasons for this shift among Hispanic women toward higher paying majors. Results of this research indicate that while the earnings gap between Hispanic and White workers will decrease as bachelor’s degree attainment of Hispanics increases, differences in the distributions of students across college majors will mitigate that decrease. The papers findings indicate that differences in college majors will influence the impact of educational attainment on the earnings inequality between Hispanics and Whites.  The relatively large presence of Hispanic males in the lower earnings majors will likely dampen the impact of college degree attainment on the racial earnings gap among men.  However, because of their relatively large presence in many majors with high starting salaries, increased degree attainment for Hispanic women is expected to substantially reduce the size of the racial earnings gap among women.

Keywords:  college major, academic achievement, gender roles, college students, Hispanic students