White College Graduates Make a Third More Than Blacks

College-educated white men earn nearly one-third more a year than college-educated black men, the Census Bureau said Thursday.

The study, conducted in 1989 and 1990, showed blacks lagging economically behind whites by almost every measure. Higher education moved blacks ahead of less-educated whites, but they still lacked the earning power of whites of equal education.

Black men 25 and older with four years or more of college on average earned $31,380 in 1989. White men of equal education earned $41,090.

The gap between black and white women age 25 and older was narrower. College-educated black women earned $26,730; white women, $27,440.

Among people 25 and older with four years of high school but no college, black men earned $20,280; white men, $26,510; black women, $16,440, and white women, $16,910.

Ronald Walters, political science chairman at Howard University, said the study dealt “a devastating blow” to the idea that race is declining in significance in the United States.

“Race as a factor is growing, and racism accounts for, I would think, some of this,” Walters said.

As college-educated blacks climb the corporate ladder, many reach the “glass ceiling,” an informal barrier to promotion.

Rather than rising, “they languish in jobs that are below their qualifications, or they are siphoned out” to another company, Walters said.

The census survey provided broad confirmation of Labor Department research that found widespread barriers to promotion of minorities and women in nine large corporations.

The Labor Department report, released in August, said much of the bias was unintentional, caused by such practices as word-of-mouth recruiting, lack of access to management development and training and the failure of executives to foster advancement of minorities and women.

Other factors that lessened the value of a college education for blacks include:

* Urban residence. Jobs sought by college-educated blacks have moved from the cities where they live to the suburbs, where there are fewer blacks, Walters said.

* Type of company. Claudette Bennett, author of the census report, said college-educated blacks are more likely than whites to work in service industries, where salaries are low.

* Time with a company. Taynia Mann, a research demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington research group, said college-educated blacks are relative newcomers to the labor market so they have had less time than whites to win promotion and higher pay.

Although blacks reaped fewer rewards for education than whites, blacks were more likely to have four years of college in 1990 than 10 years earlier, the census study said. Last year, 16% of blacks ages 35 to 44 had completed four years of college, compared to 8% in 1980.

In that age group, 80% of blacks had completed four years of high school in 1990, compared to 63% in 1980.

But fewer black men just out of high school had enrolled in college--25% in 1988, compared to 26% in 1980. Black women were more likely to go to college: 31% of recent high school graduates were enrolled in college in 1988, compared to 29% in 1980.

The study found that by other economic measures, blacks in 1989 and 1990 were less well off than whites:

* Black families had an average income of $20,210, virtually unchanged from 1979 when inflation is factored in. Whites families’ income averaged $35,980, representing a 3% increase in purchasing power.

* Thirty-one percent of American blacks were poor in 1989, about the same as 10 years earlier. That works out to 9.3 million poor blacks in 1989.

* Among black workers, 13% of the men and 19% of the women were in managerial or professional positions. Twenty-seven percent of white men and women workers were in those positions.

* Four percent of black men earned $50,000 or more, compared to 14% of white men. The difference among women was less: 1% of black women earned at least $50,000, compared to 2% of white women.

The Census Bureau study was based on interviews with 111,000 people in 1989 and 1990.