College Majors Methodology

Data Sources
A variety of data sources are used in order to create the estimates used. The primary source is the American Community Survey years 2009-2022. All dollar values are converted into real 2022 $ throughout the analysis in order to be on a comparable basis. I restrict the sample to people who reported their college major, and thus exclude any imputations.

For all analyses involving earnings (median early career earning, lifetime earnings, earnings by occupation/industry, and etc) I restrict to men. This is because I look at median incomes of all graduates, including those who do not work. The restriction to men addresses concerns that women may sort into certain majors because they intend to have more or less children, which would bias estimates of returns for majors.